“Surround yourself with people you love being around.”
Jason Kennedy, the head coach of women’s volleyball at Boston College sits down with us in this episode of the 35,000 Feet podcast and gives us insight into his journey as a volleyball coach. During our interview, Jason tells us about how he grew up playing volleyball in Hawaii, the unconventional career path he took which ultimately led to coaching, and his experience working with USA volleyball.
In this episode, we discuss:
How this past season went for the Boston College Volleyball team (:34)
How Coach Kennedy got into coaching (2:20)
Jason’s favorite travel experience (7:00)
One thing that no one knows about Jason (12:32)
Jason’s advice to athletes wanting to play in college (13:52)
Jason’s next adventure (16:53)
Recap of Boston College Women’s Volleyball 2019 Season
Shianne: Can you kind of tell us about how your season went, the highs and the lows and just your overall journey with your team so far?
Jason Kennedy: Yeah, this season was fun. Certainly like you said, kind of a lot of ups and downs. We're really trying to embrace the building process, I think we're trying to embrace really building something from the ground up and this year was a good example of that. We finished the year 20 and 12. We got 11 wins in the ACC. We set program records for number of wins, set program records for the number of ACC wins and qualified for the first postseason that the BC volleyball program has ever been a part of. From a record standpoint, it certainly was a record-breaking year. I know there were, there's always going to be in that profession things that you wish you had, matches you wish you won. But overall, two years in, I think it's hard not to be really pretty pleased with the progress that we've made with this program and to be optimistic about the future.
Shianne: Yeah, for sure. I feel like anytime you have 20 wins in a season, that's a good season. I always, when I was playing, we would always be like, once you hit that 20 mark, it's kind of that little hump that it's just like, hey, we're actually on the right road to where we want to go.
Jason Kennedy: For sure. And getting a group that certainly has never done that before to buy in and push for that. You're getting that 20th when usually the middle or the end of November, kind of after the wear and the tear of a season happens. For us to get it and what was really our last regular season match of the year, in five sets was a huge accomplishment because to come out of it and say, "Yeah, you've got 20 wins," feels a whole lot better I think mentally and then coming out of it and saying you got 19.
Jason Kennedy’s Volleyball Journey
Shianne: How did you get into volleyball? I know you kind of played, kind of coached at other places before this. Can you kind of just tell us your journey of how you became in love with volleyball and how you became a player and a coach?
Jason Kennedy: Yeah, so I started playing all the way back in fifth grade. I grew up in Hawaii and kind of growing up there, volleyball was really the largest sport that I think most people played. Certainly across both boys and girls out there. I grew up playing through high school and kind of started the club experience there. My high school was one of the very few on the island that actually didn't have a gym. For my entire high school career, if you will, it was Mondays and Wednesdays out on the blacktop in 85-degree heat in the middle of September and October and Tuesdays and Thursdays usually out on the sand down in Ala Moana Beach Park, trying to play six on six and trying to simulate getting ready for a match in a gym on the weekend. I didn't play technically a home high school match in my life.
It was after all of that, I still really enjoyed it, which is somewhat fascinating I think. I was always on the shorter end so the opportunity for me to play in college were kind of few and far between if you will. I ended up going to Santa Clara University, joined the club program there. I had a good amount of success I think with the club program and at that point when I graduated, I was kind of done with volleyball. I enjoyed it. I was done playing and had moved onto sort of a professional career, if you will. I got roped back into coaching a few years later.
I coached a high school team for a few years out there in northern California and then out of the blue, a guy I went to high school with, Chad, kind of called and he was the graduate assistant with USC, the University of Southern California at the time and said, "Hey, I know you're good at computers. I know you know, volleyball. They're looking for someone to come in and be their technical coordinator and kind of do all the video analysis sort of thing for the men's and women's program." And at the time I was kind of in a career that involved me waking up at 6:00 in the morning and for lack of a better term, really just kind of cold calling people out of the blue, selling them websites and that was got to be a little dull and not all that fun.
I decided to make the move down to LA and kind of spent four years there as a technical coordinator learning about the collegiate realm. At that same time, beach volleyball was introduced as an NCAA sport so I had a chance to kind of learn yet another version of volleyball if you will, and kind of employed the same video analysis and scattering report type thing. I was doing the indoor sides to the sand, at which point USA Volleyball reached out and asked me to start to become involved with their beach programs, to kind of help them set things up for their technological advances, if you will, as they wanted to get more into the video and analysis side of things. And hopped on board with them for a number of years.
Had a chance to do quite a bit of travel with those guys internationally, see some of the best athletes really in the world, week in and week out during the summer. And then kind of got hired on as an assistant at SC. Kind of worked my way up the ladder there until about two years ago now. I was able to get the job out here in Boston and get my first head coaching job under my belt and the rest, as they say, it's kind of history at this point.
Jason Kennedy’s Favorite Travel Experiences with Volleyball
Shianne: Can you kind of tell us about maybe some of your favorite travel experiences you had with volleyball?
Jason Kennedy: I didn't know much about the international beach scene going into it. I kind of, similar to what you mentioned, I was familiar with the AVP. Obviously watched the Olympics when that was on every four years and was into it from that standpoint. I had no idea of the, certainly the international following that's out there, especially over in Europe for the sport. You would go to some of these events and it would be a week-long tournament and there'd be eight to 10,000 people in a stadium from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM, seven days a week.
And the atmosphere that you see and the passion that you see, out of a lot of these fans is surreal. I just think, one of the best tournaments I think in the world right now is probably in Vienna and they must get close to 10,000 people in there every day from start to finish. And it's not the fan that's in there just to sit in there and kind of be on their phone for the experience, but they're engaged, they're into the sport. It really becomes an experience that I think certainly there's progress being made to try to replicate here in the States. But I think there's a long way to go to be able to produce that sort of a production like they're doing overseas right now.
Shianne: Yeah. Have you had the opportunity to travel any with your Boston College team?
Jason Kennedy: So far, we've just kind of done the domestic US stuff, but we've traveled quite a bit in the first two years. I think last year in the first four weeks of the season we won a match in about eight different states in the first four weeks of the season. That was quite an accomplishment. I think when we're in the Northeast, volleyball right now is trying to catch up a little bit in the Northeast as far as level of play and that sort of thing. We have to do a lot of travel to get ready for the ACC schedule. And that was something we embraced last year. We went out to Oregon for a weekend, had a chance to see some really good competition out there. Follow that up by driving down to Connecticut where we saw some of the better local teams here to the Northeast. We went to Florida the third weekend to play a number of teams.
At this point now, we've played in the Pacific Northwest, we've played back to the Northeast. Now we've played down in the Southeast if you will, in Florida and finished it back up with a tournament up here in Rhode Island. You just look at those four weeks, before even the conference schedule starts, where the next week after that we headed off to Georgia Tech and Clemson, we've got a number of miles under our belt certainly.
Shianne: Yeah. It seems like you guys have kind of gone all over the place.
Jason Kennedy: Yeah, I think, but I think for a lot of, even our athletes now on our roster, they end up in club volleyball where they travel to the same cities over and over. It's good I think for us to be able to take them and experience something new. I know there are a number of people on our roster who, my first year here, we took them out to Phoenix and they're like, this is the furthest west I've ever been in my life. And we followed that up by taking them a little further and getting them out to Oregon. I think collegiate athletics kind of gives you an opportunity to be able to see other parts of the country, to experience what other parts of the US are like. And we'd like to, and we're certainly planning on eventually taking this team overseas, do a foreign tour in the next couple of years.
And that's something that I think for a lot of them, maybe their first time out of the country and being able to do it in an environment where they know they're safe, they know they're comfortable traveling with their teammates, while still playing the game that they love is really a kind of a one of a kind opportunity from a travel perspective. To be able to do all of that and learn the experiences of playing other teams from other countries. And sitting down and having dinner with some of those athletes and just learning about the way of life that they have that's different than what we're doing here in the US.
Something Unique About Jason Kennedy
Jason Kennedy: I guess my team knows this now because we've played this game before, but I was a bio major in college and initially wanted to go into premed and that didn't quite work out. I spent the summer actually working at what was called Marine World up in Vallejo, California, where I spent the summer training killer whales, believe it or not.
Jason Kennedy’s Advice for Athletes Wanting to Play in College
Jason Kennedy: I think you have to find somewhere that you enjoy and you could enjoy a place for a number of different reasons. But I think the thing that you have to realize is playing a sport in college and going to college is hard enough. There's a lot of people that go to college and they're taxed to try to get through college and make grades and get a degree and all that stuff. You try to throw on what's basically a part-time job on top of that, to be an athlete, doesn't really matter what level you're playing at, whether it's division one, division two, division three, a JUCO, it doesn't matter. It's still a time commitment that if you're not passionate about your sport and passionate about what you're doing, that gets to be a drag and nobody likes that and it's not good for a team. It's not good for you individually. Your coaches don't really enjoy having you around.
I think the biggest thing is to find somewhere that you enjoy and you wake up in the morning, and you're like, you're psyched to do it. You're excited to go to practice. You're excited to be with your team because if you're not, then this all comes and goes in four years. You get one opportunity to do this. And it used to be, for me when I was at USC, the goal was to win a national championship at all costs seemingly. And that didn't really connect for me because I always thought there was something missing. And you come out here and you get a little bit more of the whole person experience or we get to take the time to appreciate the kids that we work with.
And even going through the recruiting process with some of them, really getting to know them, their families, learn what drives them and they become much more than just, how are you going to help me win a national championship? And I think in doing that, we've learned as coaches here to enjoy the four years that we get to spend with these kids. We get young female student-athletes that come into the program as 18-year-olds and over the course of four years, they start from these naive freshmen that don't know up from down to, we're looking at some now that are graduating in a couple of months, have full-time jobs lined up or going into law school. They really grow up over those four years. And I think if you can enjoy that experience and surround yourself with people that you enjoy being around, I think you're missing a big opportunity.
What’s In Store For Jason Kennedy and the Boston College Volleyball Team
Jason Kennedy: What am I most excited about? Well, kind of like I just mentioned, we've got a large class coming in so we're going to have a good number of new faces and I'm excited to see how this new team works together. I think this group that we had last year, from our standpoint, that group finished their season in December. And we get a group now that restarted in January. We're starting to train, we're getting a little bit better at certain things and then in the summer we kind of get this influx of all these brand new faces that we only kind of know through the recruiting process. And seeing how everything all fits together is something that's exciting because with such a large group, you're planning on spending time with these kids and getting to know them over the next four years. It's almost, in a way, they always say when you're growing up, oh, you don't get to choose your family. And I feel like in a lot of ways now being in college and coaching, we kind of do.
Shianne: Yeah, you kind of do.
Jason Kennedy: And we say, you don't check the character box, you're not someone that I want to see in the morning, sorry, this isn't the best place for you. But you think about how much time we get to spend with these kids. We see them more than their parents do over these four years, I can tell you that. I think the thing that's exciting is just, we've been following some of these kids now for two, three years and we've seen them from afar, but actually getting them on campus and starting kind of four years sabbatical for them out of their home lives and this kind of bubble of a campus. Where we're responsible for them as a coaching staff and we want to see them succeed and that doesn't mean just on the court. We want to see them succeed in the classroom.
It's something I'm always excited about to see where it goes because you never know what's going to happen. We have goals as a team to make the NCAA tournament, which BC has never been able to do. And you get these freshmen that are going to step on campus in June or July and that might be the group that does it. Just seeing them kind of grow up and grow into those roles until something like that happens, it's kind of this surreal process that I don't think many people get to be a part of. And having that as a constant, year in and year out in this profession is really what makes it exciting. Being in athletics and being in sports, you kind of leave the door open for anything can happen.
It's not like your normal 9:00 to 5:00 where you clock in, you clock out, you have a very good control of what's happening day in and day out. In sports you never know. We may win 10 matches next year. We may win 25 and make the tournament, nobody knows. But the possibility to do either is there and you get to shape it and you get to learn from it and no matter what happens, 10 months from now in January you get to do it all over again. And I think that's the thing that's probably most exciting about this profession is you go through this cycle and you go through this competition and for us at the end of the year, from August to December and then you kind of come off the high of adrenaline and competition and you do it all over again. And it doesn't really matter how the year went or how it didn't go, but you start anew and you redo it and you try to do it a little bit better than you did the year before.
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Theme Song - I’ll Just Be Me by Gravity Castle