From the sidelines to the stands
Coach Andy Banachowski announced his retirement after 43 years as coach of the UCLA women’s volleyball team. Banachowski guided UCLA’s women’s volleyball program from a small team that was “just a step above intramurals” to a premier NCAA program with six national titles. The 64-year-old coach will officially leave UCLA at the end of his contract on June 30.
By Farzad Mashhood
Jan. 20, 2010 9:46 p.m.
It took Andy Banachowski 37 years to get an office with a door. All that time with the same job, and finally a door.
With the remodeling of the J.D. Morgan Center in 2001, UCLA’s women’s volleyball coach moved into his new office, accompanied with dozens of trophies and plaques.
Today, over 45 years after arriving in Westwood, Banachowski still leaves the door open for players to get their nerves calmed before the USC game or for assistants to discuss the best way to counter Stanford’s block.
And for 43 of those 45 years, he has had just one title:
Head coach, women’s volleyball.
Despite the constancy Banachowski experienced at that position, he has bounced around since his start at UCLA in fall 1964.
For four years, he was a student-athlete on the men’s volleyball team.
After graduating, he spent about 10 years heading intramural sports from his office in the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center.
Then, he moved to be the full-time women’s volleyball coach with an office in a trailer parked next to Glorya Kaufman Hall, at the time called the Women’s Gym.
In 1983, the face of women’s volleyball worked from a cubicle in the newly constructed Morgan Center, eventually moving to the other side of the building after the remodeling.
Perhaps that movement is what has kept the 64-year-old in good shape, or allowed him to remain the calm firmament holding the team together during matches.
But with the official start of his retirement from volleyball in June, the white-haired Banachowski, his handshake firm, will leave behind his program. Head coach of UCLA’s women’s volleyball team, a position that didn’t exist 45 years ago, is now one of the most coveted jobs in volleyball.
For players like outside hitter Dicey McGraw, likely the team’s sole senior to start this upcoming season, Banachowski’s unexpected retirement, announced after a team workout Jan. 11, has been tough to deal with and even tougher to explain.
What does Banachowski’s retirement mean for the team?
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say because Andy is the program,” McGraw said. “UCLA volleyball is Andy Banachowski. They’re hand-in-hand.”
McGraw’s teammate and sophomore middle back Katie Camp was startled upon hearing of her coach’s departure.
“Andy is a huge part of our lives and it kind of hit us hard,” Camp said. “He’s kind of the face of volleyball, if you think about it.”
It would seem obvious that after working the same post for 43 years, and at an age where he or she can receive full retirement benefits, somebody would jump at the opportunity to retire. But Banachowski said he’s been considering retirement for the past four years and made a very difficult decision during the offseason to let go of the program he started in 1965.
Dave Fleming, who coached under Banachowski from 2001 to 2004 and currently coaches the Mesa State women’s volleyball team, said his former boss’s retirement was a shock.
“It’s just going to be kind of strange seeing UCLA without Andy,” Fleming said. “I think shock is kind of how everybody felt about it. That’s how I felt about it. I base a lot of what I do as a coach “¦ on what Andy taught me at UCLA.”
From the ground up
Banachowski has come a long way to gain the prominence he has in the volleyball community, helping build the women’s volleyball program from scratch. Banachowski began with the upstart program in his sophomore year at UCLA, after just one season as a setter under up-and-coming men’s volleyball coach Al Scates.
Banachowski continued to balance playing under Scates in the winter and spring and coaching the women during the fall until he graduated in 1968. The then-22-year-old also worked full-time directing intramural sports. His duties of supervising IM games conflicted with the women’s volleyball team’s practice time and for two years, Banachowski stepped aside from coaching.
Eventually, he was able to take over the women’s volleyball team again in 1970 and hasn’t left since.
Through that time, Banachowski said he saw the program develop from just “a step above intramurals” to being “widely recognized as a premier sport for women.
“There wasn’t a lot of notoriety or publicity or attention,” said Banachowski of the early days of the sport. “It was definitely, at the beginnings, a very local, Southern California thing for us. Then when there was a National Championship sponsored, that’s when the sport started taking steps to where we are now.”
Beginning before the days of blockbuster prospects and massive recruiting budgets, Banachowski said his team would recruit by placing an advertisement in the Daily Bruin.
Eventually, recruiting expanded to what it is today, where coaches begin following girls early in their high school careers, and, as Banachowski put it, “one of the most frustrating, time-consuming parts of” coaching.
The recruiting scene in women’s volleyball, Banachowski explained, began with local searches and was usually fueled by word of mouth. It eventually expanded to a near-systematic search through local pockets of talent mostly in Southern California, Texas and Chicago. Today, however, it’s nationwide.
“That has totally changed where you could go anywhere in the country now to find talented athletes to come out and play,” Banachowski said. “You look at some of the kids on our roster now: Katie Camp from North Carolina, Sara Sage from Ohio. We would have never looked there for players at all in the early days.”
With the beast of recruiting come daily frustrations for Banachowski:
“One of the things that I felt and noticed with the recruiting because you have to spend so much time looking to the future, that it’s sometimes hard to enjoy the present. I have times where players on the current team get a little bit of a disservice because, maybe, as coaches, it’s hard to spend as much time with them and nourishing them when you’re having to spend as much time to recruit future players.”
In addition to its constant forward-looking nature, recruiting is a low-success job.
“You know going into what efforts you’re putting into it, your results are going to be very minimal,” Banachowski said. “You recruit 10 kids, you’re probably going to get only two or three.”
Banachowski has remained near the top of the recruiting scene, consistently bringing in top talent from Southern California and the rest of the United States. Katie Camp, who led Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, N.C. to three consecutive State Championships, recalled being recruited by Banachowski as early as her sophomore year in high school.
Banachowski explained that recruiting has shifted to the point where high school athletes are committing as early as their sophomore and junior years, forcing coaches to localize their recruiting.
Being forced to adapt to constantly changing recruiting methods, he added, is what kept him at the top for so long.
“You realize there are problems with (recruiting), and yet it’s not the most pleasurable part of being a coach, but yet it forces you to stay active, be involved, be thinking of new ways to be innovative,” he said. “It’s a challenge and those are the things that keep you going on this job.”
A sudden end
For the volleyball world, seeing the man who built the six-time national champion program at UCLA, retirement was a stunning end to a storied career.
At the tear-filled team meeting where he announced his retirement, McGraw was begging him to stay, crying, “just one more season!”
Banachowski explained that he decided it was a good time for him to retire, and, with the start of a new decade, the women’s volleyball team will start a new volume in their dynasty.
With his departure, however, Banachowski is not entirely divorcing himself from the team, nor are players expecting to lose all contact with their mentor.
“Just because he’s not my “˜head coach,’ doesn’t mean that I can’t go to him for anything,” said McGraw, who played under Banachowski for three seasons.
Banachowski added that he will be a common fixture at Pauley Pavilion but for the first time in the stands, as “a big fan of the girls.”
To Camp, there’s not much to add about Banachowski:
“I think he’s pretty self explanatory. Six championships. A few Pac-10 titles. Working for 43 years. It’s pretty memorable. He’s legendary.”
