John Speraw is in his eighth season as head volleyball coach of the UC Irvine men's program. His team won the national championship in 2007 and 2009 and has been in the Final Four three of the last four years. He was named the AVCA's National Coach of the Year in 2006. Speraw's Anteaters won the 2009 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) Conference title and were ranked #1 in the nation at the end of the regular season.
Before coaching at UCI, Speraw worked as an assistant coach under Al Scates at UCLA, his alma mater. Speraw played middle blocker as a Bruin from 1990-1995, winning two national championships.
He served as an assistant coach for the gold medal-winning US men's national team from 2007-2008.On the competition
Who’s the toughest competition for you?
Gosh, they’re all tough. Even our first round match up against UCLA is brutal. They started off the year not very good. They were mixing around line ups and they were starting four or five freshman, they had some injuries. I mean they still have three freshman on the floor, but they’ve been playing great volleyball all toward the end of the season. I think that is the toughest number eight seed of all time that we’ve had.
Who is the best player in the country right now?
I think there are two of them. Eric Vance at Northridge and then Paul Carroll at Pepperdine. After that, I don’t even know where to begin. Those two guys are the best two players. Maybe Vance, but Paul is so good. He is hitting way over .400 for an opposite. He blocks well, he serves well. Vance might be the best player because he has similar numbers but he has to pass also. I wouldn’t be surprised if those guys are co-players of the year. For me it’s a toss up. I’d take either of them.
How do you feel the season went?
You know, probably surprisingly well. I’m not necessarily surprised that we’re at this point at this time of the year, I felt like we had a chance to be good at the end. We just started winning early and just never stopped. To me, that’s a great achievement. We’ve been somewhere near the top the entire season. I don’t think anybody expected us to do it in that fashion. It’s just been a blast. Winning is fun and we got to do a lot of it this year.
What was the key to your success this year?
The key to succeeding was not any different than it was back in 2007 when we won the national championship and that is a total team effort. I don’t think there is any one particular individual that we can say 'that is our stud,' you know, 'that is our guy that we’re going to set 50 or 60 balls to.' Some teams have that. Pepperdine has that with Paul Carroll, Northridge has that with Vance, Long Beach has that with Brenner. But we don’t have that. We just have a group of guys that go out and we run a pretty balanced offense and they all compete pretty hard. It has just been a team effort.
We have been blocking the ball a lot this year. The fact that we have a 6’9” setter is helpful. Carson Clark gives us more strength at the net. Jordan DuFault improved his passing and his hitting to the point so now we have better strength blocking on the left than we did last year. Surprisingly we’ve gotten great production out of Austin D'Amore, our 6’5” freshman middle. We don’t get much production blocking wise out of a senior 6’5” middle. For him to come in and do that it’s been a real tremendous asset for us.
On the Future of Men’s Volleyball
What is the future of men’s volleyball?
I actually thought it was getting better. I was pretty bullish on the whole men’s volleyball side of things. There was good growth in Division III, they’re going to surpass 50 teams next season so they’ll be able to apply for their own championship. That is pretty significant, I think. There is some talk about growth in Division II. Then there was even talk a little bit about growth in Division I.
The talent level has increased. More boys are playing every year. It’s pretty significant. Every single year more and more boys are playing. More states are sponsoring state championships. So I was pretty optimistic.
The economy is a very interesting new wrinkle because now no one is expanding. Schools are contracting and Pepperdine is cutting sports. All of a sudden things changed a little bit. So now I’ve gone from being optimistic to hoping we stay where we’re at and when we get out of the economic slump we can continue our growth. I think it is a great sport. Now I’m just hoping we can hold strong here.
Were you interested in the 2012 job for USAV?
I was interested in it. But not interested enough to take it. I loved the experience, I loved the job and it is something that I’d probably like to do someday but I just I couldn’t get myself to do it right now. There were probably three conversations I had with people that influenced my decision.
One was with Eric Sullivan. Eric said the one thing that is tough is that if you leave Irvine and you do this for four years what do you get when you come out? You’re probably coaching women’s volleyball. It’s not bad, but you just need to understand the environment. You’re out recruiting every weekend and the time you spend traveling and recruiting really changes the job significantly. He cautioned me about leaving what I have because it is a really unique situation.
Then I talked to Hugh about it and Hugh said this is a job that at some point during the quad gets to be pretty tough. He said when you’re only two years in and you’re in some crummy hotel room in Bulgaria, you begin to question whether this is the right move for you. You have to be at a point where you go ‘this is what I want to do now.’ And I thought to myself I am hemming and hawing a little bit here.
The third conversation I had was with the Provost of UC Irvine. I’m having breakfast one-on-one with the Provost and he’s telling me his own thoughts about what he hopes we can do at the University with volleyball and I just don’t think there are very many volleyball coaches (men’s or women’s) that have the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with the Provost and have him tell you what his goals are for the volleyball program. I just felt like things are going too well here. It is too special of a time and a moment for me to walk away from this.
