“There’s times that it’s tough but it’s all so worth it.”
Jill Kramer, the head coach of women’s volleyball at Texas Christian University, sits down with us in this episode of the 35,000 feet podcast providing a glimpse of the past season for her team, some great travel expeditions she has been on, and advice to athletes.
In this episode, we discuss:
How this past season went for the TCU Volleyball team (0:28)
How Coach Kramer got into coaching (6:05)
Jill’s favorite travel experience (10:00)
One thing that no one knows about Jill (12:27)
Jill’s advice to athletes wanting to play in college (14:30)
Jill’s next adventure (18:19)
The Past Season for Texas Christian University Women’s Volleyball
Morgan: Hi guys. Welcome back. It's Morgan. Today I'm sitting down with Coach Jill. Thanks so much for joining us.
Jill: Thank you for asking me to do this. It's been cool to learn about you guys in the process. I'm excited for our conversation.
Morgan: I know, and I'm excited, too. I love getting to know different coaches and the stories that they have to tell and the things that they have to teach us. And so one of the first questions I wanted to ask you today, Jill, is a little bit about some of the highs and lows of your season.
Jill: Yeah, yeah. I think we actually started out our season, I like to think of it as starting out our season in the summer on our foreign tour. We had a large group of freshmen. We had nine players in a freshman class and they all got to graduate early and come on the trip with us, and so that gave us a good amount of time to spend together. Had a really strong recruiting class last year, so they were ranked five or six and in some different polls.
Morgan: Wow.
Jill: Right? What we did was we flew out to Amsterdam and spent about close to a week in Holland and played some volleyball and trained there at Olympic Stadium a bit. And then went to flew from there to Venice and spent a day there. I met some players, some former players of mine. Before I was at TCU, I was the head coach at West Virginia University.
Morgan: Cool.
Jill: And one of my players is Greek and the other one has a house in Greece, so they met us out there. Spent some time with them. We went, played the Italian B team before they went out to the World University Games and then ended our trip in the south of France and spent about three or four days there before we came home. And so for our team that get to spend that amount of time together was really awesome.
A bunch of our players are from Texas. Many of them had never left the United States before, so they're having this new experience with new teammates and coaches, all that kind of stuff. That was definitely a big high of our season. We had an injury that kept one of our better players out or starter from the previous year. That changed some things for us in the season and so we didn't quite finish where we wanted, and had a lot of youth on the court.
I'd call this past season a major learning season for our team. So much growth. We had so much youth on the court. And so we went and played in the NIDC and went to Georgia Tech in the semifinals and played. That was a great match. They're very much in a similar boat, a young team, and that was a heck of a match, but we came up just a little bit short in that one and ended our season in the semifinals in NIDC, but all excited to get back together now soon, get going on this year.
Morgan: Oh, no, it's so true. It sounds like it's been quite the season. And I love that you guys were able to do so much and accomplish so much. I love that you mentioned your team got to spend so much time together, because I think along with that, any sort of travel brings a team closer.
Jill: Oh yeah.
Morgan: Did you see that a lot?
Jill: Oh yeah, like I said, especially with close to half of our team were freshmen, right? They really got a chance to connect with the players that had been on our team for the previous seasons. And so that was the main purpose. We got to start learning our systems at that time and those kinds of things, which are really important heading into a season. And for volleyball, typically we only get two weeks for the preseason and that's not very much, right?
Morgan: No.
Jill: You're trying to grind it out during double days. I think it was so much to learn in such a short period of time. Something like a foreign trip for newcomers is huge.
Morgan: Oh, so huge. Well, especially because that's such a fun trip that you went on to Amsterdam. Those are beautiful places. That must have been an awesome opportunity for them.
Jill: Oh, we rode our bikes everywhere. They got to really see what that life is like. People bike everywhere there. I don't know if you've been, but they really do. Everybody got a bike. We stayed in the city center. We biked everywhere we went unless we needed to take a train or a bus out to another town. We stayed at their Olympic facility.
Morgan: Wow.
Jill: There was an Olympic training facility in Arnhem. We stayed out there for a few days and trained where their national team trains. That was a lot of fun and I know something that they'll always remember. We've been talking about it a lot lately actually, just thinking back about how beautiful everything was and some of those memories. We ended our trip in Nice. And so we found a few places, some smaller cliffs they could jump off that were 10, 15 feet. And some of them really conquered some fears doing that, and it's something they could experience together. And we hear that a lot that, that was one of their favorite parts of it.
Morgan: Oh my gosh. No, that sounds like a fun trip. I'm glad you guys were able to do that. I don't know. I think that's so fun. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Jill: Yeah, definitely.
The Start of Coach Jill Kramer’s Career
Morgan: No, that's been an awesome season. That's why I love listening to this too, is because everyone has such different seasons, things they accomplished and I think that's so fun for you guys. And so I'm curious for you Jill, how did you get to be a coach? What's your story there?
Jill: Let's see. I graduated from TCU in 2000 and immediately I got my degree in business and really wanted to work in either consulting or some type of sports management or marketing, and actually got a job. There was a league called NFL Europe at the time. And the NFL had a league in Europe. And so my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, he's Dutch. And so he works with athletes all the time, professional athletes. And so he was doing some work with an NFL Europe team and I actually got a job doing marketing for the Amsterdam Admirals.
Morgan: Oh wow.
Jill: But then kind of at the last minute there, my dad needed me to stay home and run his business for him. And so that was in contracting. And so I became a contractor immediately.
Morgan: Wow.
Jill: That was interesting. And so I did that and then I did that for about a year and a half, close to two years and I thought, "Oh man, this is the real world," and volleyball was just so much more fun. It was a game. I liked that so much more than just dealing with the business side of things. And I decided, "Hey, why don't I go back to school and coach?" I was graduate assistant at University of the Incarnate Word for one season. And I just said, "Man, I'm having a blast doing this," and I got offered a full-time position at UT San Antonio, just after that first season.
Morgan: Wow.
Jill: I ended up not finishing my master's, but I was just loving volleyball too much and wasn't enjoying the school part as much. I was just wanting to be in the gym all the time. I just said, "I'm just going to do this. I'm not enjoying it anymore," and I've enjoyed it the entire time. You always have your ups and downs, your seasons that are just off the charts and ones that are a little bit more challenging, but there's so many young women that you can help and you can help them grow, help them learn more about themselves, help them learn more about volleyball and be part of a team, something bigger than themselves, and I love that about what I do.
Morgan: I think that's awesome. No, and I think it's cool hearing your story because you decided to take the path that you enjoyed the most. And I think that makes a difference in coaches is you want to be there and you want to help the team. I can tell that that helps your players.
Jill: Oh yeah. No, I loved it. Especially when I first started, you did not get paid very much at all, right? And so I wasn't even getting paid minimum wage full-time at UTSA at the time. And so I was coaching club also just in the gym, all day and all night. It was a lot and I loved it. It was a lot of fun just coaching all the time. There wasn't administrative stuff like you have as a head coach. You're just in the gym and you're teaching volleyball and that's it. That part was really cool. And then when you get into some of these other things, and I decided, because I was doing club and college, I just wanted to do college. I just wanted to coach college so I can put all my time and effort into that. And it's been a blast.
Morgan: No, I love your story. I'm glad you're doing what you're doing and that you love it so much. I think, again, that makes a huge difference in the coaching and the playing too. I love that. Thanks for sharing your story.
Jill: Yeah, of course.
A Top Travel Experience for Coach Jill Kramer
Morgan: You did talk about your foreign tour, but is there another travel experience that comes to mind that you'd want to share with us?
Jill: Yeah. Probably the other big trip that I took was in 2011. Went to the World Championships in Peru and that was pretty amazing. We started off our trip, actually. It was Rob Browning, who's the head coach at St. Mary's University, he was the head coach as a team and myself and Eric Sullivan, who's an associate coach at Texas and Denise Corlett who just retired this year, but she was a coach at Stanford for quite a while. We all took this group to compete in world championships. And we started out in San Francisco training for ... I forget ... a week or two, and then went with the team from there to Trujillo and spent some time, I want to say like a week in Trujillo, week and a half, and then went from there to Lima.
Morgan: Oh cool.
Jill: Man, what an amazing experience. I had been to Europe a lot before that, but I had never been ... I mean, I grew up in San Antonio and I'd never even been to Mexico at that point, right? I've never been anywhere in South America. And so it was really cool to get to see all the different cultures and try all the food. We ate cuy. Have you ever had cuy?
Morgan: No. What even is that?
Jill: No. You've never had cuy? It's like fried Guinea pig.
Morgan: What?
Jill: It looks like this Guinea pig is just ... They fry it whole, so it's a shape of a Guinea pig just laying there.
Morgan: No.
Jill: Oh yeah. But that was the big thing is we all tried cuy. And so yeah. But man, really awesome team, great experience and man something, I'll never forget for sure.
A Lesser Known Fact About Coach Jill Kramer
Morgan: Wow. Yeah. You've had quite the experiences and I love that. I love that. I think it's awesome that sports in general, they can just take you so many places that you wouldn't have even planned on going. I think that's awesome that you've had such awesome experiences. What's one thing that no one knows about you that you could share with us?
Jill: I'm pretty much an open book. I mean, people know this about me if they know me, but when I ... Well, I've always liked to work. When I grew up, my parents owned restaurants. My dad was actually a rancher, so I grew up on a ranch, but they own some restaurants. I grew up from the time I was probably 12 working in a restaurant, whether it's washing dishes or cleaning up or waiting tables, pretty young, things like that. And because of that, I think I've always liked serving others a little bit, just service in general, and I look coffee, love, love, love coffee. Actually, when I was going back to school and I needed a little part-time gig so I could also have insurance, I was a barista at-
Morgan: Oh, whoa.
Jill: I was a barista at Starbucks, when you actually made the coffee, when you pulled the shot yourself, didn't just push a button. But yeah, so I was a barista for a couple years there when I was also a coach. That's what I did part-time.
Morgan: Awesome.
Jill: And I love coffee, right? And I actually liked that job. I got to serve others. I got to drink a lot of coffee and work with some pretty cool people. That was fun.
Morgan: Oh, that's awesome. No, it sounds like you've had quite the range of things to be able to do.
Jill: But that's great, right?
Morgan: Yes.
Jill: I love it. I love it.
Morgan: I know. You're getting more talents, so I love that. Well, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing.
Jill: Yeah.
Coach Jill Kramer’s Advice to Athletes
Morgan: And I guess the next question I have for you is if you're an athlete wanting to play for a team or university, what would your advice be to them?
Jill: I think when you're going to go play ... One of the things I talk to coaches about when I'm recruiting one of their athletes is do they love volleyball? Do they love to play volleyball? I think that's so important. In college, as you know, Morgan, because you put time in yourself playing, but the amount of time you put into your craft and training and connecting with your team and all that kind of stuff, you put so much into that in college. And there's going to be times where it feels like a lot. They need to love it. They need to love the team part because it's about you and it's not, right? It's about you and it's about you loving what you do and it's also about the team and loving your team, right? And so part of that is putting time and attention to your teammates.
What I'd say is if you love volleyball, you're going to be fine wherever you go, and you love your team, you'll be fine wherever you go. And I think at the same time, [inaudible 00:16:26] to learn about all these different schools and know that you've got time, you don't need to rush. Take your time and get to know the people that you're going to be around because you could go visit the school and spend 24 hours there and the campus can be beautiful, but those buildings, they're not going to help you solve your problems. They're not going to change things for you when you're having a bad day and they're not going to listen to you and you want to share something great going on.
I think paying attention to the people at the university that you're visiting more than the place that you're at, because the people are going to be what makes your experience really special, and so I think that's really, really important. It's hard. When you're 16, 17, 18 years old, you're like, "Oh man, I love this dorm so much more." That's easy, right? That's easy thing to say when again, that dorm is not going to fix anything for you. That dorm is not going to be there for you when you need them. I don't know, I think getting to know people and then just again, loving volleyball.
Morgan: Oh, no, I think that's great advice because again, I love that you said love volleyball because that's what you're getting paid do, and you'll be doing it for those years and it becomes like a job, a job you love, but-
Jill: Yeah, at times it can ... Just like you've talked about with everything else, you've got all this travel. Throughout a season, it's going to take you a lot of different places. And you know what also? That travel is tough sometimes. That travel is getting back it at two or three in the morning and getting back up the next day and going to your 8:00 class and then practicing. There are times when it's really tough, but it's all so worth it, especially when you're around people who you love and you trust.
Morgan: Oh, no, it's so true. That team family is so important.
Jill: Oh yeah.
Coach Jill Kramer’s Next Adventure
Morgan: Yeah, no, thank you so much. The answers that you've given have just been awesome and I'm excited for people to listen. And so I'm curious, what's your next adventure?
Jill: Next adventure. I'm going to be honest, it's going to be ... Right now, it's going to be having our first match of the fall season, whenever that is. And so honestly, I'm just excited to get back into gym with my team and to go play some road matches this year. Those are my next adventures.
Morgan: Oh, awesome.
Jill: Yeah. Can't wait to do it. Can't wait to be back in the gym with them and go and go and experience a great 2020 fall season.
Morgan: And I know it's going to be great for you guys, especially because I can just tell how much ... The passion you have for it translates over to your players. And so I can tell that that passion is going to take you guys far.
Jill: Yeah. Thank you.
Morgan: Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for joining us today and letting us get a glimpse into your wonderful team. I don't know. It's been fun hearing your insights and the adventures you've had not only while being a coach, but your whole life. Thank you for letting us get a glimpse into that today.
Jill: Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me. I've really enjoyed our conversation.
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Theme Song - I’ll Just Be Me by Gravity Castle