Episode #106: Heather Pavlik

🏆 Heather Pavlik: Building a Dynasty with Toughness and Compassion

What does it take to build not just a winning team, but a dynasty? Juniata College Head Women’s Volleyball Coach Heather Pavlik has done exactly that—leading her program to three straight NCAA Division III National Championships, including back-to-back undefeated seasons. Along the way, she’s replaced key players, sustained the highest level of performance, and proven why she’s an 8-time Landmark Conference Coach of the Year and the 2024 AVCA National Coach of the Year.

In this episode of Significant Coaching, Heather shares the balance that defines her leadership: toughness that drives excellence on the court, paired with compassion that shapes her players as people off the court. From teaching her athletes to focus only on the voices that matter, to creating a standard of accountability and love, Heather Pavlik epitomizes what it means to be a significant leader.

Subscribe, favorite, and share this episode—it’s the best way to support the growth of this podcast. And don’t forget to visit CoachMattRogers.com for my book Significant Recruiting: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes and the brand-new Recruit’s Journal series, including the new Soccer edition, to help athletes and families navigate their recruiting journey with confidence and clarity.

Transcript

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We've talked a lot recently about the idea that the only opinions that matter are the people standing in the gym looking each other in the eye, and that's the way it has to be all the time. But yes, your parents are gonna have ideas about what we're doing and how we're doing it. People around campus will have ideas about, expectations of what we should do and how we should do it. But in the end, the only, only people that matter is standing in the gym every single day. Welcome back to The Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm your host Matt Rogers. Every year across every sport an NCAA champion is crowned. That alone is rarefied air, but winning back-to-back championships. That's almost unheard of. And then there's Juta College Women's Volleyball under the leadership of Head Coach Heather Pavlik, our guest today. The Eagles haven't just won back to back championships. They've won three straight and in the process they've gone a combined 70 and oh. Over the past two seasons, even more remarkable, they've done it while graduating three key players after each of those championship runs. That doesn't happen by accident. That's a testament to the culture. Heather has built the program's standard of excellence and her ability to teach and lead at the highest level. Coach Pavlik has been recognized eight times as the Landmark Conference Coach of the year, and in 2024 she was named the American Volleyball Coaches Association National Coach of the Year. Few leaders in any sport have matched her ability to sustain dominance while continuing to grow the People Insider Program. Today you'll hear her talk about teaching her players that the only opinions that matter are from those who show up every day and put in the work on their court. It's a lesson rooted in both toughness and love, the same combination that has made her a championship coach and a transformational leader. Before we dive in, let me remind you. If this podcast is bringing you value, hit that subscribe button, click favorite, share it with your teams, share it with your families, and even drop in a comment. That's how we continue to grow this coaching, recruiting, and learning community. And don't forget, you can find my book Significant Recruiting, the Playbook for prospective college athletes, along with the recruits journal series, baseball, basketball, softball, volleyball, and now soccer@coachmattrogers.com. Alright, let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Junior OUTTA college head women's volleyball coach Heather Pavlik. I. Coach Pavlik. So great to see you and I'm so thankful'cause you're doing this right at the beginning of your season, the heart of where it's crazy. So thanks for doing this with me today. You're very welcome. It's nice to be here. I've got a first question for you. This is gonna be profound for you to start with, but. Is there a sense of relief going into this season knowing you don't have to put up with that awful Olivia Foley again? No. I, Olivia and I actually are in contact regularly and it's neat going in with different, a different group. But I certainly miss all of those very experienced, wonderful people and Olivia for certain. You had a great group and I, it's, it was such a joy for me to talk to her maturity and her insight and her humility. I just, and she's a straight shooter. Yeah. It made me miss coaching,'cause those are the type of kids you live for, for, forget her accolades and all that. She's just a great kid. And what a break for sure. For sure. And it's fun'cause she's a straight shooter. I'm a straight shooter. So we were a really good match. Yeah. And we talked about her recruiting experience and I don't know if, did you listen to her episode? I did. She's I was expecting this coach to love me and tell me how great I was. And she went right into saying, Hey, you gotta do this better if you're gonna throw back sets, you gotta do this better. Where does that come from for you in making that first impression and making sure a kid knows, Hey, this is serious. This is your future. This is my future and this is a group of kids I'm bringing you into. I wanna make sure you get this. Is that important for you to set that tempo early? Very much I think we really believe in the idea of bringing the right people through the door, and that's the beginning of having a great team, is making sure you've got the right people in the right places. And them understanding what they're getting into, because I think we really buy into the idea of we want you to be part of something bigger than yourself. Yeah. Which means setting ego aside and thinking in terms of what's best for the team and the group. And I remember that with Olivia. We really wanted her and I told her that, but I also told her, Hey, these are a couple of things that, I would want you to get better at. And I think it's always good to balance those things. I think people you're recruiting should know you really like them, but that you also see room for growth because you really do want them to reach their potential and get better during these four years. Yeah. You've had all the success. You had great success as a player. You had great success as an assistant. Your mentor is one of the best that's ever coached in the game. Yes. You've had three just unbelievable years. Are you able to appreciate it? Are you able to sit back a little bit and enjoy it a little bit more than you did? Three years ago my husband's really good at reminding me to stop and smell the roses a little bit. Yeah. I can be very much onto the next. And he reminds me and did a great job over these three years of this is something really special, Heather, and you really should soak it up a little bit. And I know you won't until it's done, but when it's done, take some time to reflect. And so I really tried to do that after the last three years and, I always just lean on my husband for that'cause he is very good at reminding me. It's our partners are so big for those things. And those people, they just, they don't get talked about enough of how important our partner is in our future and our kids and how we're able to coach and, basically make nothing and. Make a lot less than we could be making and work a lot more hours than what our salary looks like to do this and how much we love it. So that's great to hear. Has your perspective changed on how you attack a season? Since we're at the beginning of a new one. Yeah, I think it's different every year, right? I think it just depends what you have. I think one of the things that we talked about over the last three, even though we had the same cast of characters, we really did talk about the idea that every year is individual. It's different, even with the same people, it's not gonna feel the same. It's not gonna happen the same. You can't expect the exact same outcomes with things. And remembering that it's a fresh journey and it, and that's what it really is. It's a journey. You don't really know what's gonna be thrown at you. You don't know what adversity you don't know what challenges. And I think that just by the simple fact of having won the first year, we were all very different people that spring the hardest spring was actually the spring of 20. Three. And we really had to work on the idea of, okay, listen, yes, we had all the success. That doesn't change the way you prep to try to have success again in a very different way, even though it's all the same people. So I think every year's a little bit different. I think we went into this year saying, my staff and I went in saying, okay, we've had all the success, but we have all these young players now. Yeah. And how do we protect them? That might be the biggest deal in all of this, is how do we help them reframe success. How do we help them think about getting better every day and not feel the weight or the burden of what they're following, because that could be very easy. The people around you on campus, people that you run into at the grocery store or at the gas station, they have some preconceived notions of what they expect right now. And they don't always reframe that in, okay, we've got a lot of freshmen and sophomores who are gonna be doing this for the first time. How do we take that pressure on us? Take it away from them. Just let them get better day by day. It's a challenge. It is going to be a challenge. I've said this way too many times on the show, but for me, I always looked at every freshman going, if I can get them to the point where they're stepping on the court. There's some authenticity. They're not thinking about, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, and they're just playing. If I can do that in 18 months with them, I've had a successful recruit. Where are you at with where you expect that freshman to be able to say they get it. We can push'em a little bit more. We can talk leadership with them a little bit more. We can raise the bar a little bit. Where are you at with incoming kids? I think you have to get to the point where there's a lot of self-awareness for them. Because youngsters are not always very self-aware with how they present, with what they do with, okay, are we working as hard as we really could? Because they don't know. They don't know what they're getting into. They think they do, but they don't really. And so I think the idea of once they become a little bit self-aware of, oh, wait a minute, I probably could push a little harder here, or I could communicate more, or I could work a little harder. Or could do this one skill better. I think that's when you, I feel like, okay, we've got them now. They're understanding that it's a process, that they're not gonna be perfect upfront. That it's about that tiny bit of achievement. It's not just physical. It could be, Hey, I had a great mental day today in practice. I had a great effort day. I had a great attitude day. When they start buying into those kind of things, the things that they can actually control, energy, effort, attitude, then I know we've got them. I was such a hard ass as a coach. I always had to remind my players, hear the words, not the tone. How do we get kids to do that? How do we get kids to believe that it's okay to do that? We talk about it a lot too, and I think it is a challenge. I think sometimes really great messages are lost because the tone is not maybe what one person wants to hear, right? So I think we take attack it from both sides. We literally just got done doing a meeting about this last week that sometimes you have to hear the message and not the delivery. I think we talk about, hey, get really good at. Understanding who the people around you are and what they might need from you and how you can deliver a message that's gonna be taken well. But when we're in the heat of battle, someone might say something that is very accurate and it might not feel good at that moment. That's okay. We also need to learn how to be better receivers.'Cause everyone talks about the message, but we learn need to learn to be better receivers and we sift through information, hear the really good information in it. And just let the delivery go. And if it's bothering you a day later after you've given it some time to think about it, then maybe you talk to the person about it. But if it's not bothering you after 24 hours, it's time to just let it go. Yeah, it is. Yeah. We talk about letting it go all the time. It's such an important message because if you're not letting it go you're never growing. You just, you're constantly in the shadows and you're not understanding. The light is just, it's right here. I just gotta take a step over here to get to the light. I want to talk about patience from your perspective because I never had seasons like you. I was a college basketball coach, but we went to the national tournament a couple times and we won a couple conference championships, and after that really good season, I'm like, okay, let's go. I want to put the pedal on the metal and build off of where we were. And you've, and like you mentioned, you've got these new kids coming in. What is your patience like now in these first three or four weeks of the season? First couple of games? Do you have to remind yourself to take a step back or are you putting the pedal to the metal and doing other things behind the scenes to help those kids get caught up? I think it's a little bit of both. I think in general I'm more patient now than I was early in my career. Yeah. Because I think you just, more student athletes over the years and you understand that everybody's a little different and their timeline's a little different. Yeah. And some get it right way and some don't, and whenever they get it, that's a good thing. Yeah. And even if that's a year later so I think my patience is better. I think we're being especially patient with this group because they have so much to learn and again, so much expectation that I think we're trying to push in a healthy way but also really be there to catch them when they struggle. Yeah. And have lots of good conversations about, hey, if we're getting one 10th of a percent better each day at something physical, mental, emotional, then we're getting better. And that's what this is about. It's not about. Being perfect. It's not about you're not gonna win everything. You're gonna drop sets. Even those teams the last couple years didn't lose a match. They lost sets because nobody's perfect. And I think we wanna have a lot of patients with this group while still demanding that they do the things they can control to the best of their ability. But their skills may need to catch up for a little while. All right. I'm gonna ask you a really hard question. Don't hang up. Don't give up on me, but I'm gonna ask you this anyways'cause I think it's important and it's a very positive question. I don't want it to come be perceived as negative for your career, for the program, for the school. What would a loss mean this year, like in, in a week and that what would that mean? Yeah, and we've talked about that in this office, the whole off season. I think the, it will be overreaction probably around us outside of the program, inside the program. I don't think we're gonna react at all. I think we're gonna say, okay, this is part of learning. That's right. In some ways it's the best teacher. Yeah. The best teachers to lose. Yeah. Because then start highlighting the things that you've been talking about and say, okay, this is why we talk about this. And it's going to hit them in a different way than if they win a game and play just soso. Yeah. We've talked a lot recently about the idea that the only opinions that matter are the people standing in the gym looking each other in the eye, and that's the way it has to be all the time. But yes, your parents are gonna have ideas about what we're doing and how we're doing it. People around campus will have ideas about, expectations of what we should do and how we should do it. But in the end, the only, only people that matter is standing in the gym every single day. Yeah. And as long as we can look each other in the eye and say we're doing our very best, that's all that matters. It's funny I talked to Wade Wilson a couple weeks ago, the softball coach down at Texas Lutheran, and they went, when they won their national championship, they went like 50 and won. And we just talked about that one loss because it was fairly early in the season. And I go, what did that one loss do for the rest of the career, rest of the season? He goes. Because we hadn't given up a run in eight games, and I think they lost the one game, like one to nothing. It was ridiculous. And he goes, but we were getting sloppy. We hadn't given up a run, but we were starting to get sloppy. We were starting to get a little too big a britches, and it brought us down to earth that we could lose, and that if we don't bring it every day, we don't prepare the right way. If we're not thinking with significance, we're always thinking the success is gonna happen then. It was great for us to feel that early. You guys haven't had a lot of that, yeah. Mar, back in November is the first time you lost two sets, right? Yeah. How good it was tho losing those two sets for your returners coming back this year just to know that they can take a punch and get right back up. I think it was good for them to see that. We don't have many returners. We only have one. Yeah. An outside hitter and I think she has a pretty good handle on that. But even the younger players who weren't on the floor, I think they know how good the people were, they were training against every single day in our practice gym. Yeah. And they understand that, okay, they are really good and they had won how many matches in a row at that point. But if you don't do things the way you need to. Yes, you can lose. I think it's a good reminder. People forget that on the front end of this whole streak, right? We, the third week of season in 22 went to Texas. We went down, we played Trinity, and we played awful. We made 56 errors in that match. And honestly, that set the tone for everything that came after, because. They walked outta there. We had numerous players on that roster who said, that's not gonna happen again. That is not happening again. We've gotta be better. And every single time something came up that season where we were a little sloppy, we weren't doing what we're supposed to be doing, they would bring it up. They were like, Hey, you remember down in Texas? Oh yeah, let's clean this up because we do not wanna see that again. But they referenced that for a very long time, even into the year after that. Then by the time we got to midway through the 23 season, that group was so mature that they didn't even need to reference that anymore. It was like, Hey, let's bring it in. This is not how we play volleyball. That's right. And the greatest comment during that semi-final came after the first two games, we lose, we take a break and. Senior outside, hit or Kennedy, Chrissy said, I'm sorry. This is not the way this ends. This is not the way we're doing this. We're going out our way, playing our game. This is not how I'm ending my career, nor is it how any of you are ending your career. And I didn't need to say a word. I didn't say anything because she had already covered it. Ownership, yeah, love. Absolutely. As a basketball coach, I would teach in practice I'd constantly be talking about this, that in a single possession there might be 30 to 40 things that we could do wrong or right. How we set the screen, how we run off the screen, how we catch the ball, the angle we take, I see all that in volleyball. The steps, the positioning, anticipation blocking together, you know what, whatever that may be, where our hands are. Our hand position on blocks. How much of that are you teaching every day and how hard is that to teach at your level? We are teaching it, but I think we really focus more on playing loose and free and playing really aggressively. I think anyone who's played us the last couple years would say we are very ferocious. We are very aggressive. We want them taking swings. We really don't worry about errors very much at all. Whether that's serving, hitting if they're being aggressive while doing it and prepping properly. We just say nothing about the outcome because I don't wanna be outcome oriented anyway. Let's be process oriented and do things the right way. I think what we've learned over time is that in order to teach skills, we break it away from the competitive piece. We have really competitive people. They don't like to lose. And sometimes when you're learning to do something better or learning something new, you get worse at it before you get better. Yeah. And so they don't want to do it during six on six play in practice because they don't wanna cost their team and they don't wanna lose. So we've learned to take the skill stuff away from the competitive piece. So we actually do small group sessions during the week and we have two or three people in it. And that's where we work on the technique pieces. Yeah, perfecting that hand position. Perfecting your passing technique. Perfecting your setting technique because there's no scoreboard. It's just you and I. It's just you and Casey. And let's do it right. And you just simply keep working on it there until it flows naturally into their six on six game, and then it becomes part of what they do, and they can really just think about competing and being aggressive. Because when they're playing, we don't want them thinking about the technical things. Players with too many thoughts in their head do not play loose and free. So we try to remove as many of those thoughts as we can and let them play very naturally. Love that. It's the goal for every coach is to get your team there. And oftentimes we, and I was a big problem with this. I'd get in the way, and it's sometimes it's just getting the heck outta the way is where you see the more growth. So I love that. So is that more individual workouts between classes or is that early on in practice? No, we just had a couple, we kinda have'em come in whenever it fits their schedule. And we just work through all the technical pieces of it. We may film it so that they can see what they're doing. Love it. But yeah it's hard to. We say, when you're playing six on six, we only want you thinking about being really competitive and maybe thinking about some of the tactical concerns. Who's in front of you, what do they do? But for yourself, let's just play, let's just go. How many times a week are you doing that with a group of kids? And then are you doing that all season long? We do it all season long. We try to make sure every player gets one of those every single week. Because I think the other thing it does is you're gonna have people who maybe aren't getting much playing time. Yeah. And even in practice, they don't play as much as some other people that way, every one of our players knows that they're getting our undivided attention on them for this amount of time. Just worried about them. I think that goes a long way as well. How many kids do you carry? Right now we're at 22. I think we've been, last year we were 25'cause we had the grad students back. So we were a little larger, but we're about 22. You graduated what? Eight? We actually graduated 10. We had seven seniors and three grad students. That's right. Gosh, that's crazy. It's a lot of people. Oh gosh. That hurts my, just hurts my head. Thinking about replacing 10 kids like that's great. We do, it's interesting because I think the younger players. Last spring started to figure out, oh wow. We already know how to play at a high level because we played against those people every day. It was a realization that I don't think they had until after maybe we played some of our spring competition. Yeah. And they realized, oh, we're wait. We're pretty good and we know how to do this. Yeah. I'm like, yeah.'cause you were playing against really good people every single day for the last year or two, depending on your age. The idea of. We're the only ones that are beating the national champions every week. That's pretty good thought. I remember distinctly the day last season when the youngsters'cause we'll sometimes go split squad, sometimes we'll go stack squad. We do some of both. I distinctly remember the day that they beat the first team because there was just jubilance, there was just celebration. My gosh, that must have been awesome. We just did that. I'm like, you absolutely did just do that. And that's amazing. That is so great. And again, you didn't have that loss or that you had that set streak, so that must have been huge for your starters. Yeah they they took any kind of a loss very hard. That group did not like to lose at anything. We have a lot of insanely competitive people in that group. Let's go back talking about that. What do you typically play in a game? Do you get to 10? Sometimes I would say the average is probably 9, 9, 9 players. So that's thir 12, 13 kids that aren't seeing the floor. You talk about having that one-on-one once a week with them. What does that look like in practice? Those 11, 13, 11, 12 that aren't seeing a lot of court time and games? Where is your focus? How are you being proactive? How much are you relying on your staff for that development with them? Where, what's that look like for you? I think it's a little of all of the above. We've got a great staff. I Casey Dale's my associate head coach. He's been here for 12 years. So we've worked together a very long time. He's doing what I had done. Previously,'cause I was here 15 as an assistant and an associate head coach. And then we have Aaron Smith is our assistant. She's come in the last two years. Really nice having her.'cause she's much closer to their age. Yeah. So they have someone who's recently played and she gets it. We've got great student assistants and we use all, everybody to try to help that. I would say it depends on what part of practice we're in. So when we start practice, we've got everyone doing everything. And then I think as we get towards the end of our practice, we'll do more six on six base things. So you might have 14 to 16 players out there at any given time. Maybe you're using some serving subs and we do some different things but we always have a second court going. We have a second court over there where at any time, anybody who's off at that any given moment. Can grab a coach, go down there and work on some things. That's right. Work on some of their passing, serving, hitting, whatever it might be. So we've got people coming back and forth between the two courts pretty often. And I think we try to get every single player into that six on six at some point through it. And whether that is, Hey, we're gonna go with the top 14 to 16 in the first game here, then we're gonna play another game and we're gonna switch it up. And we're gonna get everybody in there. So we really do make a concerted effort to do that. Certainly some people get more than others but I think the people who don't get as much have the opportunity to go with a coach to that other court all the time. And we encourage that. We make sure again, that they're getting that individual work during the week with us, so they feel like that, their game's moving forward and that they're getting our undivided attention. I am gonna ask you, I'm gonna break my rule and I'm gonna ask you a recruiting question in this segment.'cause I think it flows well when you know you're gonna carry 22. And you, every year you have a pretty good idea of what that nine 10 eleven's probably gonna look like or what you hope it's gonna look like or what it should look like. Is it affecting how your recruiting. In terms of I don't need to bring in a kid that is gonna get me 200 kills this year, or needs to step in and be a starter right away. Is it changing your thought process about how you're evaluating a high schooler in terms of the time you might have to develop them? Maybe a little bit. Maybe a little bit. It probably depends how good the people in their position are, right? I think, yeah. If you have the opportunity at any point to get a player you think could be in an all America, right? You go regardless. You go get them, period. Because my job in the end is to make this team as good as it can be. But I think we do, I think we're very honest with them when they come in for their recruiting visit though too. If we don't think someone would see floor time for a couple years and it could be developmental for year one and year two, we tell them that. They have to know that coming in so that it's not a surprise. We never guarantee anyone a starting position, so there's not a single person on our team who's ever come in for a visit and said, oh yeah, by the way, you'll start with we, we simply don't do that. Yeah. So even those very best recruits who we think can compete immediately, we're saying, Hey, you can come in and compete. We think you can be very competitive from the start, but you have to do the right things and the rest is up to you. Yeah. I'm just I'm more wondering, you see a six four baby giraffe. And you're like, oh my gosh, this, we can't teach that this kid can't, can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. But I see just a glimmer of what they could become. Is That's a chance you get. We go after them. Yeah. Yeah. Because there are certain things that coaches can't teach. I can't teach someone to be six four. That kind of length and ability takes time to develop. You're, they're usually not strong enough and that's why they don't control their limbs as well as they need to. And the strength and conditioning piece here is what we do. Some, we do it really well, and we always have, so we know we can get that person stronger. We had a starter on the floor last year that was exactly that. Just all arms and legs that went everywhere when she came in. And as she got stronger, she started to get good. So yeah, certainly we have room for some developmental kind of players who bring something unique to the table that we just need to uncover and help get strong and do some other things. It's, it was, it's almost. Almost more fun to have a couple of those kids because they don't have, they don't have misconceptions. They haven't been taught the wrong way. It's a clean sheet and if they have a work ethic, you can get them being absolutely much greater than where their potential may have been before they got to you. Absolutely. And when they do get it, that light bulb moment is one of the best feelings in the world for a coach. I, you're like, ah, she got it. It's right there. We had one of those the other day in the practice gym with one of our youngsters, and it feels so good when the light bulb goes on for them and for us. And yeah, those are fun. It's fun to watch them develop and get better. For sure. Yeah. That's really cool. Walk me through practice planning. When does it start? Yeah, we, what does it look like? We get together about 11 o'clock each day. Usually Casey and I, occasionally Erin will be here, sometimes she won't but Casey and I get together at about 11 and we let our players know. That's the time we practice plan. So if something comes up, you're not feeling well, you've got a meeting with a prof. Let us know so that we can plan appropriately for who's gonna be there at the beginning of practice and who might be a little bit late. I think we sit down, we think in terms of the whole week, what do we need to get done through the whole week? And we'll make lists on the board where are we incorporating these things that we need to work on. Usually, we'll alternate days of Stack Squad, split squad, and we'll go every other day or so. We'll also go maybe every other day or every couple days with are we gonna focus more today on the point scoring part of the game, the serving, the defense, the transition, the blocking versus maybe the next day we're focusing on the receive game, the passing, the offense, the first swing offense. We alternate those by day, but they know we're gonna have a focus every single day. Yeah. We always do a pre-practice. I throw a pre-practice on the board right after we're done. Doing our practice planning when they get to the gym so that they don't sit around and just talk. They have something, they know it's gonna start at eight minutes before the hour. This is what we want you to do, and they know how to get out there, get going so that when the buzzer rings and it is four o'clock, if we're practicing at four, we're gonna go. Yeah. And they're already ready to go completely. But that's how we structure things. I think it's very, it is repetitive. There are things we will do every single day. We pass and serve every single day. Of course, it doesn't sound exciting. No one, it isn't. It isn't exciting. It's the mundane part of training that you have to do if you wanna be great. And we try to give them different focuses each day to keep it fresh, have the one thing they're thinking about and working on. Because let's be honest, you pass and serve for 20 minutes to half an hour. It's not exciting. It's not exciting kind of stuff, but we have to find a way to do it well because at all levels of volleyball, if you can't pass and serve, you really can't play. See you later if you can't pass serve. So find a way new way to make it exciting. Score it differently. Give them a different focus for the day. Give them something to really think about. Servers. We don't want them going back there and just being mindless. And just throwing serves in play. All right. I want you to hit this today. I want you to go sidelines and seams today. I want you to go deep and then short. Just give them some things to focus on each time we do it, so it keeps it a little more exciting. I'm gonna go back to you talking about making sure they play loose and free and they're confident and aggressive. You were such a good player. You've had such great success. When you've got a kid that does something, a way that. Just doesn't catch your eye. How they serve, how they jump, serve, how they flat serve, how they block, and it's different the way you know it. In your soul that works, is that hard for you to let them be who they are or do you let them fail at what they're doing and then say, Hey let's try a different way. Where are you at with that? Both. Okay. So I don't wanna turn. I feel very strongly, I don't want my players to look like robots, right? They do not need to all look exactly the same. Their bodies work a little differently. And if they have a technique and it works at this level we're okay with that. We'll let them look a little different than somebody else and the way they do something. For instance, we don't necessarily do big swing blocking, but if someone's really good at it and they get the job done with it. I don't think we're gonna worry about it too much. I think we gently say, Hey, what if we tweak this a little bit to someone who maybe is doing the skill and what they're doing isn't as good as it could be? I think we'll say, Hey, listen, what, why don't we try this on this time? Let's just go in the gym and just do it and see how it goes. Yeah. And I think as they get in there,'cause I, what I don't wanna do is make them feel like what they're doing is wrong or it's bad in any way. Let's just tweak this. Let's see if we can get even better at this. And that's how we attack that kind of stuff. And some of that's with serving. We've been doing that with a server recently where I'll just say, how about you try this time? Let's see how it goes. And she'll do it. And how did that feel? It felt different. It's going to, it's gonna, yeah. What about trying it again? And actually she's doing that skill really well. Now that's great. But it was a little tweak. It wasn't an overhaul in any way. Yeah. But again that's the great thing about being a coach is when that light bulb goes off, when you can make just a little bit of tweak and all of a sudden it starts working the best example I can give of that, we had a player years ago actually played on the first championship team. In 2004. She had a serve that I think most people would've changed because she would take the bowl and wind it up and toss it for a jump serve. It just looked so different from everybody else's. She was really consistent and really good at it. So that player ended up I believe in her maybe in oh five, that player, we were down nine to 14 in a fifth game. She went back to the line to serve. We literally was like, and people were like, oh, you let her jump surf? Absolutely. This is what she does. This is the moment this is for, and she literally served us through a 1614 win with that serve that didn't look like anybody else's because she was already really good at it. So there was really no reason to change it. Yeah muscle memory and consistency can go a long way, can't I? Yeah it's about how repeatable is the technique they're using, and if it is super repeatable and they're successful, then. I don't think we need to change it. How do you handle a kid that's struggling in a game Because you want them to play loose and freeze. You don't want them to feel they're gonna get yanked if they miss a server or two. How do you handle that kid that maybe is hit three kills in the net in a row, how, why does your mind work on the sideline when you're seeing a kid that's struggling a little bit? I think, first of all, I think we talked to our players about the idea that they win jobs. To go on the court in the practice gym. Yeah. We're not into the gamer thing. Let's be a practicer. Yeah. And let's practice really well every single day. We get lots of stats on it, we get lots of data. We do not have a quick hook. We do not have a quick hook with people at all. There's a reason they're out there and we do let them work through some things sometimes and that can get a little ugly once in a while. And I just don't think pulling people in and out does a lot for confidence. Now granted, I think there are times when we absolutely need to make a sub, right? We need to make a sub, we need to get somebody else in there. But I wanna make sure that when that person comes off the floor, they sit next to me, come sit next to me, let's talk. Hey, listen, you were struggling with this. Let's go down to the end of the bench, do some deep breathing, get yourself together and be ready to go again.'cause we may need you here really soon. Then the next game, if that's a starter that we've had, we'll probably start them again the next game. Yeah. You might save them in a little bit of snippets and then you talk to the person who went in, Hey listen, really good job way to go in there and do your job. Your job is to come in, settle things down and you did it extremely well. Be ready if we need you again. But they know that just because they went in and did wow, it doesn't mean they're the starter all of a sudden.'cause that's earned over time in the practice gym. It's what you do over many weeks of time, not what you do to just today or tomorrow. And that works if that message is there every day, if it's there from the beginning. I think we try to, we talk about over communicating. Yeah. Because I really do think in the absence of communication, players usually think the worst. Coaches usually think the best. Oh, she's fine. Coaches think, oh, she's fine. The player thinks, oh, they think I'm awful. The truth is in the middle somewhere. Yeah. And so we wanna make sure that in all of those instances, we're communicating with them why did we do what we did? How they should maybe can reframe that and think about that for the next time that situation comes up. We wanna make sure that we give them ways to deal with it. Ways to process it. I don't think I've seen, when I've watched your games, I don't feel like you in set make a lot of big changes rotation wise. It's typically between sets where you'll say, we, let's give her a little bit of a break. Let's give her a set off. Is that, am I seeing that right? Is that typical? I think that's, that would be accurate probably over the last three years with that group. Yeah. I think that maybe with a different group, a little bit more of that. Yeah. If you have to. But I do think we want people to have the opportunity to struggle a little bit and work through it. Because otherwise, how do they learn to do it? If you pull them out every time, they start to struggle a little bit. You have your rotational limits that I never had as a basketball coach. I could pull a kid for a minute and have say, all right, get back in there. You don't have that ability. You only have so many subs. Yeah. And so you have to let some people work through some things sometimes too. Yeah, and you've gotta be smart about when you're subbing in and when you're subbing out and where they're at in the rotation. So that just with a daughter that's played club volleyball for the last six years, I'm just. I figure, I think I'm just learning and I feel like I'm just figuring out how rotations work. And you think ahead too, right? Yeah. If I'm going to run outta subs, who am I leaving in and who am I getting out? You gotta think about that a little bit because you don't want that five seven up there in the front row, what you got. No. And even the best coaching job you do, it does happen sometimes, but you try not to, is the mindset for you, if I'm gonna, if I'm out of rotations, I want to make sure I'm leaving big in front, is that priority one? Sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. Especially if they have at least some experience and ability to go back row at some point. Yeah. Yeah. Like the last couple years, if we were gonna run outta subs, we were most likely to live leave Audrey Muth.'cause we knew she could go back there and serve and play defense. We were most likely to leave Lily Polan in because she could do the same. Okay. And Lily reminds me all the time that the few times I've run outta subs and she had to go back and serve, she served two ACEs. So she'll never let that down. What more do you need to go coach? Two ACEs. That's right you, you your impression I get from you is you're tougher in nails, heart is stone, but a big heart. When do you get emotional? Oh, I think I get emotional when I see them have success. When you see the joy on their faces, whether that's daily in the practice gym, or whether that's after a big win or success elsewhere, right? They come in and they say, I just did the most amazing job on my presentation because you're watching people. In a time of their lives when they're figuring out who they are, what they're about, and what they stand for. And when you see the light bulb go on, things happen that you know is gonna carry them into their later life with lots of success, that's when I get a little bit of emotion. So when I watch them walk across the graduation stage definitely get emotional because you think about who they were when they came in. Then see who they are when they leave, and how much they've developed and changed. That's just that kicks into gear. A little bit of tears for me. It's hard because I don't cry often. Yeah. The older I get when I, the older I get, I the biggest, the bigger cry baby I've become, so I cry more now than I probably did in my first 45, 50 years of life. That's, it's just, you have to be so tough for your kids and you have to be so strong for your kids, and you want them to understand how we play and how we react. But there's that time where it's just, it's hard not to be emotional. Agreed. You've raised great. I agree wholeheartedly. And they're doing well for you, coach, you'd be you, whether you wanna admit it or not, you've become the standard for Division three volleyball. Do you feel that pressure? Do you welcome the idea that you're the teacher that everybody wants to learn from you? How do you feel about having that over you? I don't know. I guess I go back and forth on that. I think that we all have that part of us that is like me. Who am I? I think that's normal. I think I had the benefit of having Larry Bach be my mentor, who is in my mind, one of the best coaches who's ever coached the game. And watching how he handled himself was amazing. Always very humble, always very modest, always. Knowing that he didn't know everything and wanting to learn more. So I've guessed if I can help somebody learn I wanna take on that and wear it like a badge of honor. But at the same time, I still feel all the time, like I have so much to learn that when you have conversations with people, I learn as much from them as they do for me. I guarantee it. And that's the place I kinda live in. That you should still wanna learn, you should still wanna get better, you should still be developing. And along the way, if you can help anybody, then that's golden. That's wonderful. Yeah. When you look at the landscape of youth volleyball, you know that the club volleyball and the games these kids are playing in the length of the season, do you feel like you have a voice now to help? Make that healthier? Is that something I try? Is that something you want to do? I think it's a huge deal. Yes, I do wanna have a voice saying, we need to make sure that some of these players get at least a couple weeks off. Right now many of them are getting no time off. Nothing. We had nothing ever and'cause things are crossing over one another. We talk about it here all the time. The way we coach the game has had to change because we get freshmen in here with overuse injuries. Used to be years ago, we only got juniors and seniors who would get some overuse things as they got a little bit older. We have so many players coming in here with shoulders that are already not great with backs, lower backs for defensive players that are not great because they are playing on concrete with this much sport court over top of it. Every single weekend. Yeah. This spring playing five and six matches. They are going straight from the end of club season at nationals and coming home and doing open gyms with their high schools immediately. Then having club p, tryouts the week after that, we don't feel it's very healthy. I say I will say that to anybody who will listen at any time because I think we're doing'em a disservice. I think that they play the game better than they used to. But they're sometimes physically and mentally a mess. They are because they just have not gotten that recovery time. And I know in our program we talk about recovery a lot, and not just physical recovery, emotional recovery, mental recovery because everyone was talking about how they train. Do we talk about recovery enough? Do we teach them how to recover? Do we teach them that it's okay to have other things that they like to do for downtime? We think it's so important. It's one of the things in this program we always take off Sundays, we do nothing on Sundays ever. Yeah. Because we feel like that's a day they should be able to do whatever they wanna do. And they need it and it's healthy. And if they have other things that they like to do, art. We've had artists in this program. We have people who like to sing. We have people who dance. One of our best players is a dancer and she's continued to dance during these four years. That's great. Because it's what makes her happy and it keeps her in a really great place. And feeling really good about what she's doing and how she's doing it. Yeah. Anyone who listen, I will say that too because I think it's a huge deal right now. And I imagine you'd say the same thing about multi-sport athletes and you want that kid that's playing. Volleyball, basketball, softball, right? Yes. Yes. And we, that's what we just had, if everyone was for the last three, four years, talking about the three players we that just graduated last year, who were grad students? Olivia Kennedy, and Skye. They were all my multi-sport athletes In high school. Yeah, all of them. And they were good at multiple things, and they didn't have a ton of overuse injuries when they came in here. We definitely see more overuse injuries from people who have only played volleyball. Yeah. It's every study for the last 30 years. Makes it clear there's just no cross training. How do we fix these clubs that have gotten so big? They've got eight courts in their facility. They've got 24 teams, 12 years up. They got 24 teams. They can't find five good coaches, let alone 24. How do we fix that? Because a lot of that burnout, a lot of that bad technique, a lot of that unhealthy kids that are getting burned out and not playing anymore, it starts with coaches that really have no business coaching, let alone a seven month season. Yeah. It's a challenge. I think it's a real challenge schedule. The, I think as soon as the high school coaches started getting less time with'em.'cause let's be honest, a high school coach is not in it to make money. A high school coach is in it because they care about the kids. At least that's what I've seen over the years. Yeah. And they have them less and less, and the clubs have them more and more. And if you are lucky enough to have a great club coach, then great. You're getting good training, you're getting someone who cares about you as an individual. But I think your point is a very good one that. It's hard to find five good coaches and if you need 30, where do they come from? And what kind of training are we giving them? I think that's the biggest thing, right? You can't find 30, master coaches, you're not gonna find that. No, but how are we training those young coaches coming into clubs? How are we teaching them not about the game? Because they've probably played and they've done some things and everyone wants to focus on let's teach them to teach skills. But how do you get. An understanding of how to deal with youngsters. Yeah. How to be positive with them. How to help them learn in a way that's beneficial to them. How to communicate with them. I think all of those things are very challenging and missing, and we may have to in some of those larger clubs, if they have a master coach, that's phenomenal. I think that is much needed in some of the bigger clubs to have a master coach who goes to all the practices, not some, all of them, and can say to someone, Hey, here's a better way to say that. Yeah. Or Here's a better way to think about this. That's right.'cause that's the only way young coaches learn too and we're doing them a disservice because they don't always have a mentor, somebody who can help them through those early years. And we all need that when we're young coaches. That's how you learn. I just see such a lack of preparation. They don't know how to prepare. Not for a practice. Yeah. Teaching how to do a practice plan, right? Yeah. Yeah.'cause once you know how to prepare, saying, okay, this is what we're gonna get done today. This is how we're gonna teach it the right way. And this is what I want my tone to be today. This is what I want my energy to be today. Go beyond that. How do we, how many reps are they getting? Exactly. How are we controlling the reps? Making sure that some of these people are not taking hundreds and hundreds of reps when they don't need to. That's right. Such a huge thing. Whenever you wanna write a book or do a master class, you just let me know. I'm in to help you with it because, yeah, I just talked to Susie Enquist and, it was just a fire hose of she's just like you, she's got all this information and she's just trying to figure out, how do I help more coaches? How do I help more kids be healthy? And it's so hard for you because you've got these 22 kids in your own family that you're, you've gotta put your energy into. But we need more of those master teachers and motivators. We need them in front. Of these high school coaches and club coaches just to say, Hey there's a healthier way to do this. And there's, and it is a challenge too, right? You almost feel like our newly retired coaches are the ones we need. Because this job has gotten so much busier over the years, I find with each passing year, I have less and less time to do the volleyball pieces because you're spending more time on other things that. Good. They're good things that are being added in. Yeah. But they do take a lot of time For sure. Podcasts with me. Yeah. Why not? I really appreciate it. You're welcome. I'm gonna do a little rapid fire with you. I wanna do a little fun just so people Okay. Throw you a little bit better. Is there a match that comes to mind when you. When you think about your coaching history, it doesn't have to be a national championship, but is there a match where you kinda wake up and you remember and you think about a match or a set more than most? The 22 championship. Yeah. Because it's not when some, it was not when we were expected to win. Yeah. And the way they handle themselves. From after we lost in Texas until that championship. That's it. I was a mess after that match. I was like, that just happened. Wow. That just happened. And the cool part was Larry Bach was there and literally the first person that I see after my team is him. That's awesome. And that, that just, that brought me to tears. It would've had to been, oh, that's so great. Oh, what was, look on his face. He is so low key all the time that he was like good job, Heather. Thanks. And I threw my arms around and gave him a big hug, but he is always very low key. Cool. He sat and hid up in the stands with my husband. That's cool. All right the junior OUTTA gym is rocking. What's your pre-match ritual? Do you have something? Mine? Yeah. I'm so boring. I'm so boring. I sit in my office longer than the rest of the staff usually goes out before me. I'll sit in my office here a little bit, take a few deep breaths, get my charts together. And then I actually. In our gym, we play on the wrong side of the gym because years ago there was an advantage to starting over there.'cause we had windows up top. Okay. So we're on the wrong side of the gym actually. So I walk under the bleachers so as not to see anybody, and get to the other side of the gym. That's my. My prematch. Yeah. I would typically walk out about two minutes before the game was, I do, I'm really low key. Yeah. I'm very low key. So I go under the bleachers and pop out on the other side right at the bench. I, same way. Who's tougher to coach? Heather the player, or Heather? The coach today. Oh, Heather, the player. I was very stubborn. Very stubborn. Do God bless Larry Bach? Do you remind yourself of that? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And when you get those stubborn, although I will say some of the best players are very stubborn. That's right. They are.'cause they know they're good. Yep. But yeah, I do. When someone's being particularly ordinary, I'm like, yeah, I didn't have to coach myself, so that's good. That's right. One word your players would use to describe you. Boy that's changed over the years. I think two years ago they would've used a very intent, like intense. Yeah. And now I would say, I think they would say consistent. Very good. I think I'm very consistent, obviously. Yes. Favorite away Jim to compete in and why? Ooh. I. Today I love playing at Hope. I lo I love playing at Hope because I love him playing places where you get a lot of a lot of fans who don't like you very much. Those are the best places. Years ago I just said Watch u. Yeah, great kids.'cause there's always a great rivalry between the teams and that place Got. Packed and nasty. Absolutely. Absolutely. I wanna see that. Did you play hope this year? We played them last year. That's, we actually went, we don't play them this year, but we went up there last year and it was a great environment. It was a really fun collegiate match. Yeah. And it's a beautiful gym too. Yeah. You and Becky have similar approaches. That's a battle when you guys go at it. Which opponent has pushed you to be your best? Which, is there an opponent that you've faced over the years that you feel like. Has pushed you to do some things differently or you've learned?, I think that's changed with what what era we're talking about. I think there was a Wash U era that pushed us to be better as a program.'cause we had to be, to beat that. I think then we went through a little Emory era where they pushed us pretty darn hard. I think there was a little Hopkins era there and I think the hope, I think hope is absolutely there. I think we knew we had to raise our game. That's awesome. Coach. Thank you so much for doing this. I had a blast talking to you. I could talk to you all day long and I know our audience, who's, it's a lot of families, it's a lot of high school coaches that listen to this so much value. Thanks for doing this. Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you for having me. That was Junior outta college head coach Heather Pavlik. What stands out most to me about Heather isn't just the three straight national championships or even the back-to-back perfect seasons, it's the way she leads. Her. Players know she's gonna push them to their limits, but they also know she cares deeply about who they are off the court. That combination of toughness and compassion is so rare. It's why she epitomizes significant leadership. She's developing champions in volleyball, but more importantly, she's preparing young women for life and we're not done. Part two of my conversation with Coach Pavlik drops on September 15th on significant recruiting. In that episode, she's gonna talk about what she looks for in a recruit, how parents can best support their daughters in this recruiting process, and why division three opportunities like Jutta can be absolutely transformational. Like my D three experience was. Before you go. Make sure you subscribe. Hit that favorite button and share this podcast with somebody who needs it. That support means the world to us. It's how this show continues to grow. And don't forget, you can find my book significant Recruiting the Playbook for prospective college athletes. My brand new recruits journal series where you can pick up your recruiting journal for baseball, basketball, softball, volleyball, and now soccer@coachmattrogers.com. Each one of these journals is built to keep athletes organized, confident, and ready for the next step in their journey. Until next time, stay focused. Stay humble. And keep leading with significance.