COVER STORY
and the ball has to be killed on the left side. If you’re not covering, if you’re not getting a second contact, your team is going to lose because you need one point to win but the left side is the only person who can do it. So it puts a lot of pressure on that player, but that player also has to trust that if he gives the ball to the other side, his team will block and play defense and get it back for him to take another swing.”
Pushing the right buttons The U.S. Men fi nished 10th at the 2006 FIVB Men’s Volleyball World Championship, which tells you how much progress was made between then and 2008. Sizing up a team and fi guring out how to fi t the pieces together is, by all accounts, one of McCutcheon’s great strengths, and it may explain why his results at the international level are so im- pressive. Since volleyball was introduced as an Olympic sport in 1964, no one else has coached both the U.S. Men’s and Women’s teams, let alone taken them to the medal stand – and the fi nals, at that. McCutcheon’s infl uences have been many – McGown, Beal and longtime Pepperdine men’s coach Marv Dunphy, who was head coach of the 1988 U.S. Men’s Olympic gold-medal team. But his former players say he applies what he has learned, then mixes in his own ideas. “He’s not just a cookie-cutter clone coach, like a lot of people tend to be,” Ball says. “He has formulated his own ideology, and that was refreshing to me. As a player, the last you thing you want to do is play for another guy who’s exactly like the guy before. And if you’re the national coach, you’re dealing mostly with guys who are 28 to 38, and we’re pretty locked in to what we’re doing. A lot of coaches try to bend and mold guys into players they want, and it doesn’t happen. Hugh fi nds the pieces that work together the way they’re supposed to work.” Ball is a good example of a player Mc- Cutcheon pushed in the right direction. Despite winning championships on top-tier internation- al club teams and earning a reputation as one of the world’s premier setters, Ball had come up short at the Olympics – a ninth in Atlanta in 1996, 11th at Sydney in 2000 and fourth at Ath- ens in 2004. It was uncertain if he’d return for a fourth Olympics, but when McCutcheon visited him in Russia, where Ball was playing club ball, he told him he wanted to let somebody else be team captain. All he wanted from Ball was great setting.
“I had been captain for 10 years, and I had always felt a little overwhelmed,” Ball says. “A lot of it was my own doing, bringing attention
Hugh McCutcheon — Quick facts —
• Hometown: Christchurch, New Zealand • Playing career: New Zealand junior and senior national indoor teams (1989-90, 1996; FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour (1997), BYU (1991-93); Finland pro club volleyball (1994); Japan pro club volleyball (1995) • Coaching career: Top assistant to Carl McGown at BYU (1995-2001); Head coach – Vienna Hotvolleys in Austria (2001-2003); Assistant coach to Doug Beal – U.S. Men’s National Volleyball Team; Head coach – U.S. Men’s National Volleyball Team (2005-2008); U.S. Women’s National Volleyball Team (2009-2012); Currently the head coach of the University of Minnesota’s women’s team. • USA head coaching win-loss record:
Men’s national team – 2005-08: 106-39. Finished quadrennial ranked No. 2 in the world. Women’s national team – 2009-2012: 107-33. Finished quadrennial ranked No. 1 in the world. • Minnesota women win-loss record 2012: 27-8; elite eight at NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship • Notable USA fi nishes as head coach: Olympic gold medal, U.S. Men’s team, Beijing 2008; FIVB World League gold medal, U.S. Men’s team, 2008; NORCECA Zone Cham- pions 2005, 2007 U.S. men’s team; three consecutive FIVB World Grand Prix gold medals, U.S. Women’s team (2010-2012); NORCECA Zone Champions 2011, silver medal, U.S. women’s team, 2011 FIVB World Cup; Olympic silver medal, U.S. Women’s team, London, 2012. • Awards of note: 2008 USOC Olympic Coach of the Year
to myself outside the court as well as inside the lines, but I think there was a direct correlation between the pressure I felt and me not having performed as well as I could have in some of those Olympics. Hugh relieved a lot of pressure on me and allowed me to do what I’ve become very good at over the last 20 years.” Retired USA outside hitter Riley Salmon, who Ball and Beal both say was the team’s most valuable player in Beijing, tells a similar story. Early in the quad, he would get so in- tensely immersed in matches that his emotions would run on overdrive, and that would lead to poor decisions. Like trying to be a player he wasn’t.
“Hugh noticed that there were times I would try to play like a Cuban instead of play- ing like Riley, which is just a small outside hitter, chopping at the block. (Small is relative; he’s 6-6.) He taught me to use my head. “And, above all, he taught me how impor- tant it is to be a great teammate. That’s the best lesson I’ve learned from him.”
44 | VOLLEYBALLUSA • Digital Issue at
usavolleyball.org/mag
The difference between coaching men and women The decision to switch from coaching the U.S. Men to the U.S. Women wasn’t easy. After giving it much thought, though, McCutcheon concluded that it would be a good idea. For one thing, he’d been with the men as an assistant and then a head coach nearly seven years, and they’d been through a lot together. Beijing alone was a life-changing experience that included tragedy – Hugh’s father-in-law, Todd Bach- man, died from wounds suffered in a knife attack at a Beijing tourist site before the Games began – and McCutcheon ques- tioned whether he had become too close to the players to be objective. “With the national team job, there are a lot of tough decisions you have to make, and a lot of them have to do with selection,” McCutcheon says. “I wasn’t sure I could be objective with those guys, especially knowing that some of them were getting longer in the tooth.”
Another factor in his decision to switch was the lure of applying what he learned as the men’s coach to the women and bring- ing more of an American-based paradigm to a team that had been predominantly schooled in Asian volleyball traditions. In McCutcheon’s view, that meant putting a premium on competition in practice, emphasizing teamwork and applying a scientifi c learning approach. McCutcheon says he trained the women very much like he trained the men. The difference? “The biggest difference was dealing with the psyche of different genders,” he says. “With the guys, it’s a lot about chip- ping through the egos and getting to the core where they’re vulnerable enough to be open and honest. When you get that connection and trust, it’s a great thing, but it takes awhile. “With women, it’s almost the opposite.
You’re trying to develop the ego. You want to make them believe they are as good as they are. If you’re in a huddle with men and you’re say- ing, ‘We need to work harder on defense,’ most of the guys think, ‘He’s talking about someone else’ and most of the women think, ‘He’s talk- ing about me.’”
Preparing for success
One of the most useful things that can be learned from reviewing McCutcheon’s time with USA programs is not what happened after he took the jobs, but what happened just before. By the time he applied to become the men’s head coach, he had a close relationship with Beal, who was the incoming chief executive offi cer of USA Volleyball. But McCutcheon treated the interview as if he’d never met Beal.
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