On Thursday, he gets inducted into the American Volleyball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Then he follows that by being named the 2007 AVCA National Coach of the Year. Then on Saturday, he coaches the Nittany Lions to a thrilling five game win over Stanford for the national championship title.
Congrats Russ and congrats to the women’s vb team.
I’m still a bit skeptical that he graduated from Fremd. I didn’t think anybody admitted to being from Fremd. Are you sure its the same Fremd?
(Mar, imagine appropriate emoticons.)
I actually found out he was from Fremd when I was chatting with a guy, Kevin Hodge, I knew who played men’s volleyball at Penn State. Hodge quit playing about halfway through his college career, he wasn’t willing to make the commitment it takes to be a high level D1 athlete. He had been a backup on some of the PSU teams and just wasn’t getting enough playing time to stay motivated. He was listed on the PSU roster as being from Ohio.
I got to know Kevin pretty well (he was one of the original five guys who participated in my first Santa Crawl) and we were sitting around chatting one day when he mentioned that he and Russ went to the same high school. I knew Russ was from the Chicago area but didn’t know exactly where, and I remarked to Kevin that I thought he was from Ohio.
Kevin said that was where he finished high school because his dad was tranferred (his father worked for Proctor and Gambel and was promoted to corporate HQ in Cincinnati) but he had started in the Chicago area. I was quite surprised when Kevin told me that the school was Fremd. He told me his address in Rolling Meadows but I just wasn’t familiar enough with the area for it to mean anything.