Coaching staffs for NCAA volleyball semifinalists have different approaches

NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship
National semifinals
Texas (26-1) vs. San Diego (31-1), 7 p.m.
Pittsburgh (31-3) vs. Louisville (30-2), 30 minutes after

OMAHA, Nebraska — The four coaching staffs in Thursday’s NCAA national semifinals obviously have the same goals.

But all have different approaches, and, not surprisingly, in the cases of Texas and San Diego, the biggest differences are size and budget.

“We talk about the sport growing so much. I’m basically running an enterprise now,” Texas coach Jerritt Elliott said. “I’ve got 80 people underneath me and there’s a ton of work that needs to be done. My athletic department allowed me to hire some phenomenal coaches.”

San Diego coach Jen Petrie? 

Well, her school has an enrollment of just more than 8,000, about 43,000 less than that of rich and mighty Texas, so … 

“There’s three of us,” Petrie said. “We have to be the coordinators of everything.”

Understood.

“My staff is tremendous in the fact we can be hands-on in a lot of different areas,” Petrie continued. “And we have to wear a lot of different hats, because it’s the three of us. 

“That’s it. 

“There’s no other technical coordinator. There’s no other DOVO. So when I say we rotate hats, we do a lot of things. And we extract a lot from each other.”

No matter the division of labor, this is a gathering in which all four teams obviously have tremendous coaching staffs.

Elliott’s right-hand men are former USA Olympian Erik Sullivan, who has been with him for 12 years, which includes the last time Texas won it all in 2012, and first-year assistant David Hunt. Hunt is the former men’s coach at Pepperdine, whose resume includes being an assistant on the 2016 USA women’s team that won Olympic bronze.

“When I worked with (football coach) Pete Carroll at USC, I got to know him pretty well and watched a lot of his practices,” Elliott said. “And when I started having really good assistant coaches that really understood what we were doing, I made them coordinators.

“Eric is our defensive coordinator. David is our offensive coordinator. And we meet all week and talk about the things we do. And they are in charge of those areas. And they can focus on those areas. I’m kind of hovering above them, helping manage it and helping any way I can. But we work as a team together.

“Yes,…