BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Women’s volleyball head coach Andy
Banachowski maintains a calm demeanor during a 3-0 sweep
against Washington this year.
By Christina Teller
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The game didn’t enter his life until his junior year at
UCLA, but it’s been his passion the 37 years since.
“It’s exciting. I like competition, and I like to be
competitive,” said Andy Banachowski, who is now in his 34th
year as head coach of the women’s volleyball team.
“It’s such a unique sport in the way that you really
have to rely on one another. There’s so much teamwork
involved that one player can’t take over a game
single-handedly,” he said.
Banachowski has made the women’s volleyball team what it
is today. He has been at the helm of UCLA women’s volleyball
since its beginning.
Banachowski first came to UCLA as a student in 1974 without any
experience in volleyball. In high school, he swam and played
basketball. By the time he graduated from UCLA, however, he was an
All-American in volleyball, despite having played the sport for
only two years.
“He was a really good fundamental player,” said
Banachowski’s UCLA coach, Al Scates. “He didn’t
have a great vertical, but he maximized his physical abilities and
learned skills really well.”
In his time as a player, the game of volleyball didn’t
attract the players and attention that it does today. Scates, who
still coaches the Bruin men’s team, remembers recruiting
athletes around campus whom he felt could learn the game.
“In those days, we tried to find good athletes on campus
because there weren’t any high school volleyball
programs,” Scates said. “We had to train athletes who
were on campus.”
Banachowski turned out to be one of his best students.
Posting a career tally of 873 wins at the opening of the 2000
season, Banachowski is the winningest coach in women’s
volleyball history.
He learned the game almost at the same time he became an
undergraduate assistant to the women’s program in 1965. The
team was competing at the club level at the time and the experience
of learning volleyball was still fresh in his mind as he began
coaching the sport.
“He went through it and learned from scratch. He
didn’t know about the game before he started playing,”
Scates said. “I think it was helpful for him to go through
and really learn the game. It helped him learn to teach it because
he was teaching things that he just learned.”
Banachowski has learned coaching as a player and assistant under
Scates, but most of all, he learned how to coach from experience.
As an assistant to the U.S. women’s volleyball team in the
1992 and ’96 Olympics and as head coach in the World
University Games in ’93, the continental and international
competitions have exposed him to a wide range of volleyball.
“Experience teaches you,” Banachowski said. “I
always try to keep on learning. Going to the Olympics and being
involved in the national team program gave me an opportunity to see
other styles of volleyball.”
And according to his players, his experience is translating into
success.
“He is a great guy who demands the respect of his players.
We listen because we know he knows what he is talking about,”
said Bruin setter Erika Selsor.
“He usually reminds me about the choices to make on the
court and which ones to not make. He knows how to handle me. He can
read me very well,” she said.
The pace of volleyball has quickened since he started coaching,
largely due to the increasing size and speed of modern college
athletes. A faster game out on the court translates to more
intensive and specific workouts, focusing on each player’s
particular skills.
Having lost only two players to graduation from the 1999 squad,
the 2000 team grabbed the No. 1 spot early on and have remained in
the top 10 since.
The pressure of directing such a prestigious program is intense,
but with the amount of experience he has under his belt,
Banachowski isn’t fazed by it.
“I think it’s something that all of the coaches here
put on themselves. We expect to be in the top national picture
every year,” Banachowski said. “We work hard to
maintain our level there and certainly become disappointed and
frustrated when we’re not at that level.
“There’s pressure, but I think we enjoy that and
that’s why we’re here.”
It isn’t the fact that he is the first women’s
volleyball coach to be inducted into the Volleyball Hall of Fame or
the fact he was awarded USA Volleyball’s All-Time Great Coach
Award that drives him. Banachowski coaches out of love for the
game.
“When I began coaching, it wasn’t like I wanted to
be in the Hall of Fame or anything like that,” Banachowski
said. “It’s kind of like icing on the cake of having
this job and being involved in coaching.”