A grand ol’ time
By Daily Bruin Staff
Jan. 23, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 MARY CIECEK/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Various awards line
men’s volleyball coach Al Scates’ wall. Scates
will aim for his 1,000th career victory Friday.
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
UCLA men’s volleyball coach Al Scates looks slightly
harassed. It’s 2:15 p.m. on Monday and he’s still
talking to the guy from the Daily News, who he’s been talking
to for more than an hour now. He has two reporters waiting in his
office, he’s got tape to look at, he hasn’t checked his
e-mail, and he’s got to show up to practice in an hour and a
half.
Oh, and don’t forget meeting with the reporter from the
Orange County Register scheduled for the next day and the guy from
the L.A. Times the day after that.
“I took the morning off and played golf. I probably
shouldn’t have done that,” Scates says.
Then again, what else can Scates expect when it’s the same
week he has a chance to win his 1,000th game?
Into the phone Scates is describing all the maladies affecting
his team: junior Mark Williams out with a high ankle sprain, senior
Adam Naeve missing practice because of back spasms, and freshman
Chris Peña suffering from the flu that everyone else had the
week before.
“And I’m supposed to win my 1,000th victory. How the
hell am I gonna do that?” he says with a laugh.
Don’t forget the man woke up at 5 a.m. to make it out to
Griffith Park for his 7:06 tee off time.
Meet Al Scates. He’s been on this earth 61 years, at UCLA
for 38 of them, and this Friday against top-ranked Long Beach State
he could hit four digits in his personal win column.
You can tell just how long Scates has been at UCLA by looking
around his office. There are tapes of games that go back as far as
1974. He has five glass Coach of the Year trophies that line the
side of his desk. The most impressive mementos hang in neat rows on
the wall: the pictures of the 18 NCAA Championships teams, from
1970 to 2000, who’ve won under Scates.
The greatest men’s college volleyball coach of all time
““ he has 200 or so more wins than the next closest coach
““ has a mind that likes to analyze, a talent for bringing out
the best in his players, and lots of tradition on his side.
And he manages it all in the most quiet of ways.
“He’s certainly less of a disciplinarian and of a
screamer and a yeller than many of the other coaches that
I’ve played for,” said Karch Kiraly (1979-82), who was
recently named the male volleyball player of the century.
“But I think that that quiet demeanor can be just as
effective.”
Scates rarely raises his voice, but when he does, you listen.
Simple as that.
“The closest thing we had to a pep talk was my senior
year,” recalled Matt Sonnichsen (1986-89), now the
women’s volleyball coach at Tulsa.
It was before the 1989 NCAA Championship match. That year, the
Bruins weren’t as dominant as they normally were; they
scraped through the Regionals to get to the Final Four, but there
they had an advantage ““ UCLA was hosting the NCAA
Championships that year, and the Bruins had never lost a postseason
match at Pauley Pavilion.
“Al came in before the match, and in a very low-key
fashion he said, “˜We’re UCLA, we don’t lose
national championship matches and we don’t lose them at
home,'” Sonnichsen said. “That was all he said,
but it might as well have been a thunderclap. What he said was
true.”
Motivated by Scates’ words, the Bruins came out and
stormed through the first game 15-1. They took four games to win
their 13th national title.
Kiraly recalled that Scates’ composure helped UCLA win a
tournament in Japan in 1981. In the final match against a team of
college all-stars, the Bruins struggled. They dropped their first
two games and were down in the third game when Scates called a
timeout.
“He had the same calm demeanor. He just said, “˜The
next play, they’re gonna do this, and we’re gonna block
it and get a point. And then next play they’re gonna do this,
and we’ll block them again”¦'”
Exactly what Scates said would happen, happened. The Bruins
blocked and scored and clawed their way back into the game, then
the match. By game five, they crushed the all-star team 15-2.
Scates knows he doesn’t show much emotion. The last time
he got mad at a UCLA player was in 1990 when Tim Kelly was a
freshman. Scates called a timeout during a game and was giving his
team instructions. Kelly’s head was somewhere else, his eyes
were scanning the stands, and when Scates asked him about the
blocking instructions he just gave him, Kelly was clueless.
“So I benched him,” Scates said. “He
didn’t play the rest of the match. I may have said a few
things to him at the time also.
“For the next three years he was probably the most
attentive person in the huddle.”
Nothing irks Scates more than when his players don’t play
their best.
“The toughest thing is losing a match you should’ve
won,” Scates said. “That keeps me awake until I have
the solutions. I review the tapes, the stats, and I (plan) practice
for the next day. I’ll probably make some changes in the
lineup. And then I can sleep fine.”
UCLA’s winning tradition draws in the talent, but from
there Scates takes over, running a program where intersquad
competition rivals that of regular competition.
The competition within the team is prevalent at practices, where
players argue the calls of the “referee” (the team
manager) as though it were a real game, and where a thick blue
curtain divides the guys on the roster from the guys who hope to
make the roster. Back in Sonnichsen’s day, the non-traveling
team was called the “browner” team.
He recalled how Scates utilized the curtain.
“Sometimes a starter during a scrimmage wouldn’t be
doing very well. Al would just shout someone’s name (on the
browner team) and that guy would come pealing out around the
curtain,” Sonnichsen said. “The guy that got sent down,
you could hear him on the other side of the curtain cussing because
he was so mad he got sent down.”
Scates, as he is fond of saying, knows how to prepare a team.
And he knows how to teach his players. Senior Adam Naeve remembered
that during a scrimmage in his first practice as a freshman, Scates
asked him to jump serve.
Naeve had never successfully jump-served in high school. He gave
it a try and it landed in.
“I knew he could do it, so I walked over and told him he
had to do it,” Scates said. “He wasn’t allowed to
float serve anymore, no matter how many serving errors he
made.”
Naeve set a UCLA freshman record for aces that year with 35 and
is now second in career aces with 132.
On his way to practice Monday, Scates mentions that he is
dissatisfied with junior Matt Komer’s blocking and sophomore
Cameron Mount’s hitting. But after practice he excitedly
mentions that it was a good practice that day, and that Komer and
Mount and setter Rich Nelson were much improved on what he had to
show them.
“There was a lot of good work today,” Scates said.
“I think Komer made a lot of progress. Mount was hitting low
into the block, but he changed his approach. Rich is connecting on
the slide. I’m happy with today.”
That’s the main reason why Scates wins: because he’s
always excited to win. Thirty-eight years of coaching and
volleyball hasn’t gotten old to him.
He may look a bit tired as he takes calls from the training room
telling him the status of his star players, as he points to the six
tapes he has to take home with him since he doesn’t have time
to watch them at school, or as he ““ heaven forbid ““
swears off golf for the rest of the week.
But make no doubt about it, Scates is pumped for his 1,000th
win.
“Winning is a big deal still, to him,” assistant
coach Brian Rofer said a few weeks ago. “It’s
interesting to see how many coaches started as young as he did and
still have the excitement and motivation he has to keep winning.
It’s interesting because he knows exactly when this win could
occur.
Rofer added, “He’s loving this right now.”
Even if it is a particularly trying week for Al Scates.
AL SCATES’ CENTESIMAL VICTORIES Scates could
hit 1,000 victories this Friday against Long Beach State.
Win Opponent
Date Games No.100 2nd victory
of 1967 No.200 4th victory of 1971 No.300 Pepperdine
May 3, 1974 3-2 No.400 Loyola Marymount March 16, 1979 3-1 No.500
Stanford April 7, 1982 3-0 No.600 Long Beach State Feb. 6, 1985 3-0
No.700 San Diego State April 16, 1988 3-1 No.800 Pacific March 13,
1993 3-0 No.900 USC Feb. 19, 1997 3-1 No.999 Hawaii Jan. 19, 2001
3-2 SOURCE: UCLA Sports info Original graphic by VICTOR CHEN/Daily
Bruin Web adaptation by NATALIE DAVIS and TIM MIU
COACHING RECORDS IN MEN’S VOLLEYBALL Scates
leads volleyball coaches of both gender in all-time victories.
#. Coach, School
W L PCT
Yrs 1. Al Scates, UCLA 999 161 .8619 39 2. Don
Shondell, Ball State 769 280 .7331 34 3. Glenn Nelson, Princeton
447 162 .7340 22 4. Ken Preston, UC Santa Barbara 405 262 .6072 23
5. Ray Ratelle, Long Beach State 385 190 .6696 19 6. Arnie Ball,
IPFW 374 239 .6101 21 7. Pete Hanson, Ohio State 310 198 .6192 16
8. Marv Dunphy, Pepperdine 302 132 .6959 17 9. Scott Gleason,
LIU-Southhampton 210 153 .579 11 10. Jack Henn, San Diego State 209
221 .4860 18 SOURCE: UCLA Sports info Original graphic by VICTOR
CHEN/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by ROBERT LIU/Daily Bruin Senior
Staff
