It’s postseason for another sport and a Penn State team has found its rhythm after a tough regular season. Sound familiar?
After the women’s volleyball team won the national championship and the men’s hockey team reached the Frozen Four, it’s the men’s volleyball team that’s winning when it matters most.
Not long ago the Nittany Lions were safely and securely a sub-.500 squad with a postseason run somewhat unlikely. Watching them in March on the road while losing to Grand Canyon University, they were hard-working but made a lot of unforced errors.
In April, though, the team rebounded and mostly smacked around its Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association rivals, going 5-1 to end the regular season. It then swept Harvard, NJIT and Princeton to earn the conference championship (the 37th in program history) and the accompanying automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament.
A first-round tournament match against Daeman resulted in another sweep and Penn State (15-15) plays again Thursday — a quarterfinal matchup against second-ranked Hawaii (26-5) in Columbus, Ohio.
It’ll be the seventh all-time postseason match between Hawaii and Penn State. The Rainbow Warriors swept Penn State on March 15, when the Nittany Lions traveled to the islands for matches against the host team, USC and Ball State. All were losses, just days after that loss to Grand Canyon.
Still, some things have changed for Penn State since then. Conversely, one thing has remained consistent. It’s the same factor that helped the women’s volleyball team and men’s hockey team enjoy their postseason success — the coach.
Men’s volleyball coach Mark Pavlik might try to aw-shucks you regarding his abilities, but the 679 career victories, two dozen NCAA Tournament appearances and 34 different players who have earned 68 All-America honors are not just right-place, right-time results. Nor are they simply because the players were hard-working and talented.
A good coach, a national championship-level coach, finds ways to elevate and support players. They get better because of the coach. They embrace collective success rather than worrying only about themselves.
With a good coach, that’s hard work that ends up looking easy because the coach knows what they’re doing.
Pavlik knows what he’s doing. He’s not performative about his job, and he’s not into theatrics as players develop. If a player makes a mistake during practice and offers some visible bit of frustration just because, Pavlik might have a quiet conversation afterward and ask why.
After all, everyone knows it was a mistake but there’s no reason for some look-at-me moment as a result.
No, Pav’s super power and the reason for his success comes in his consistency. His line — “Penn Staters are just ordinary people who do extraordinary things” — applies as much to his efforts (though it’s not meant that way) as it does to the hundreds of people associated with volleyball and not that he’s found impressive through the years.
With that grounding mindset as his understanding of what Penn Staters can do, success has become ordinary.
Not boring, and especially not boastful. Not unappreciated, either. It’s just down-to-earth, blue-collar effort and preparation that lead to on-court success.
This run could end for Penn State as soon as Thursday, and in the small, NIL-threatened world of men’s college volleyball, this season’s postseason run might be one of the few remaining for the sport in its present form.
Still, any sport with Pavlik playing a prominent role and leading a championship-caliber team is a good thing.
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