CHARLIE SULLIVAN

Charlie Sullivan and Ed Greene sat on the edge of a bed inside a little room in Rome, Italy, prepared to let a coin decide what one of them would end up doing for the rest of his life – but they didn’t know it yet.

Marymount International High School had become co-ed just before Sullivan and Greene, two bright-eyed Springfield College graduates, arrived with their PE degrees in the fall of 1991. They were tasked with creating an athletics program to attract more students. The only problem was there were no coaches.

So the pair had to tackle coaching duties for just about every team the school had. Soccer was a no-brainer, as they both spent four years kicking it around at Springfield, and basketball was no issue either. But when it came to volleyball, they knew nothing.

“We had a meeting with admissions and I was like, ‘Yeah, I haven’t even been to a volleyball game, there’s no way I could do that,”’ Sullivan said.

Neither of them wanted to do it. So, they had to settle things the old-fashioned way: with the flip of a coin.

The punishment was simple: Loser coaches volleyball.

As the coin rotated in the air, the direction of Sullivan’s future floated in the balance. One small decision – heads or tails – was about to alter the trajectory of his life.

Neither of them remember what he called, they just know he lost.

The first live volleyball match Sullivan ever saw was the first he ever coached.

Charlie Sullivan, or “Chaz,” as he was then called, was that guy in his Alden Street heyday. He was the “popular, baby-faced assassin” – as Greene, his best friend and soccer teammate, called him, but on the field he wasn’t that guy.

Sullivan wasn’t an everyday starter, nor one of the team’s three All-Americans, and you’d rarely ever read about him in the write-ups. But he was, and still is, someone who always put his team’s interests above his own.

“I don’t think in four years I ever heard Chaz complain,” Greene said. “It was always, ‘The team, the team, the team … what’s best for the team?’ And the way he was as an athlete, I think that’s the way he is as a coach. He expects the same thing – he expects players to put the team first.”

Sullivan was calm and easygoing, but he was always observing. He understood the ins and outs of the game and was invested in – and loyal to – the team.

“The reason Charlie is wellliked is because of who he is,” former Springfield College soccer coach Peter Haley said. “There’s an integrity about Charlie and a professionalism. You’d look in a crowd and you could probably pick out Charlie because of the way he presents himself, the way he is.”

During their senior year, Sullivan and Greene lived in the soccer house off of Shillingford Street -- now, an empty parking lot. Unlike most of their roommates, they had no idea what they were doing after graduation.

One afternoon, while playing RBI Baseball on Nintendo, they concocted a plan for their future. A graduate student had told them about the Moroka Swallows, a professional soccer team in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“All of a sudden we got it into our heads that we were going to be professional soccer players,” Greene recalled.

After graduation they would move to Sullivan’s parents’ house in Madison, N.J., and work with Sullivan’s brothers painting houses.

“We’re going to paint houses, we’re going to make a bunch of money and then we’re going to fly to London and stay with my cousins in London for about six months. And then we’re going to make our way to South Africa,” Greene said.

When they eventually arrived in England, the duo met up with Greene’s aunt. She immediately called their plan crazy.

Rather than supporting their half-thought-out South African soccer dreams, she offered them full-time jobs where they could use their degrees – teaching PE at an international school in Rome. They declined.

So Greene’s aunt phoned his mother in New York, and said, “What are these two knuckleheads doing? Do they seriously think they’re going to become professional soccer players in South Africa?”

It was the early 1990s. Nelson Mandela had just been released from prison, and the apartheid government in South Africa was falling apart.

Greene’s mom called him back and said, “You guys are idiots. Take the job in Italy.”

“So, we took the job,” Greene said.

They became PE teachers, intramural coordinators and varsity coaches – but it was only a short-term plan. Professional soccer was still in their sights.

“We just fell in love with Rome,” Greene said. “We finally realized what idiots we were. We had full-time jobs, we were

living in one of the best cities in the world – it was incredible. And we endedup staying there.”

Sullivan stayed two additional years at Marymount International School, coaching soccer, basketball and volleyball.

In Sullivan’s head, coaching is like chess. Every move has an impact on the final outcome of the match. Attention has to be paid to the positioning of your pieces, and even more is directed to that of your opponent. It is a concept that Sullivan’s brain is exceptional at capturing.

“There’s a lot that goes through his head,” said graduate student Johjan Mussa Robles, who is in his sixth year playing volleyball for Sullivan. “Trying to understand Coach, you’re gonna get into a maze. It’s fascinating to me how he has many, many, many different things in his head, and they’re very organized.”

When he was coaching a Marymount girls basketball playoff game, Sullivan was the grandmaster.

Marymount was one of three private international schools in its league; the rest were American military bases. Sullivan’s team had one American player named Christina who could dribble. The rest of his team consisted of the children of Italian celebrities.

“We had these upper-class, wealthy Italians,” Sullivan said. “Valeria was this Italian girl on my team. She was a great athlete and could learn anything really fast. So we had Christina, Valeria and then this compilation of players who had really never played basketball before.”

The extent of his offense consisted of avoiding the paint (to avoid a three-second violation) by standing on the block just outside. If a player got a rebound, she fed the ball to Christina.

When Sullivan began his pregame scouting work on Vicenza, he didn’t think his team had a chance. Vicenza ran a suffocating full-court zone press that turned teams over with regularity and ledto easy scores.

“I don’t think they had won a game by less than 40 all year,” Sullivan said.

Getting his pieces into position, Sullivan knew if he could break the press they would go back into a halfcourt zone. Most important, there was no shot clock in the league.

“We were a Catholic school so I said, ‘If, by the grace of God, we could break their press and they sat back in the zone, we would just dribble at half court the whole quarter,’” he said.

So, Sullivan constructed a movement pattern to get the ball over half court. That’s all he wanted to do. And his team did it.

Sullivan remembers fans yelling in the small gym that his game plan was against the rules, objects being thrown in his direction, opposing coaches yelling too, but the Vicenza five on the court anticipated some sort of offense to come catch them off guard so they stayedback in the zone. The offense never came — Sullivan’s team just kept on dribbling.

After the first quarter the score was 0-0.

“Our team had no idea what was going on,” Sullivan said. “Christina was the only girl who could dribble so she’s dribbling at half court like, ‘This is what you want me to do?’’’

Marymount got the ball at the start of the second quarter

and did the same thing. In the middle of the quarter Vicenza switched into a person-to-person defense in an attempt to block Sullivan’s move and end the stalemate. But, he had a plan for that too.

Marymount set a backside pick for Valeria, who was open and made the layup.

“Our girls ran off the floor like they had won the Super Bowl, they’re on the bench hugging each other and Vicenza inbounded the ball and got a layup (to make it) 2-2,” Sullivan said. “And then we had to call a timeout like, ‘Guys, that was really great we scored, but if we ever score again you needto stay on the floor and play defense.’”

At halftime the score remained 2-2. Marymount eventually lost 14-12 and missed about 16 layups.

“It was a cat-and-mouse game, which is what I love doing in volleyball,” Sullivan said. “In the middle of the third quarter, that’s when I decidedI was gonna be a coach.”

Sullivan was only upset about losing the fateful coin toss for “maybe a nanosecond,” Greene said, before he bought in.

He reached out to Rita Crockett, who is considered one of the best all-around volleyball players ever in the world and who was inducted into the International Volleyball Hall of Fame in 2011. Crockett played in Rome for a few years while Sullivan was coaching, so he talked to her and she brought him to one of her practices. He then worked as a volunteer coach with one of the best pro teams in Europe.

“So, I went from not coaching baseball to coaching with the Yankees,” Sullivan said. “Not coaching, just getting water and shagging balls and stuff, but I was in the gym. I was learning and watching and just getting a sense of the game, but that’s the level I started to observe at, which was really fortunate.”

Sullivan didn’t stop there. He called Joel Dearing, the men’s volleyball coach at Springfield, and told him he was flying back from Rome for the summer and he would be working at Dearing’s volleyball camp at the College. Dearing told him he didn’t have any positions – that besides, he remembered him as a soccer player.

With his eyes set on a new plan and a desire to be the best, Sullivan refused to take no for an answer. He countered, and said he didn’t needto be paid a nickel. He would volunteer his summer. He just wanted to know everything Dearing knew about the sport.

“What did I encounter?” Dearing said. “The only person on the planet that talks faster than me: Charlie Sullivan. The only person I know that processes as fast as me: probably Charlie Sullivan. He was just itching to learn and asked a million questions. That’s exactly who you want to be interacting with – somebody who’s like a sponge and has enough self-confidence to take it on.”

After his four years coaching in Rome, Sullivan realized he was more into the competition than the kids were. He wanted to go to another level. He knew he neededa Master’s degree to get there, so Sullivan returned to Alden Street, much more mature than when

ON THE BIG STAGE

he left it, and became a Graduate Assistant in Phys Ed.

At the same time, he volunteered with Haley’s soccer team and with the volleyball team under Sean Byron, who was in his first year at the helm after taking over for Dearing.

“I think good athletes and good spatial thinkers relate to him,” Byron said. “I think if he was a football coach, he’d be a good football coach. I think if he was a basketball coach, he’d be a good basketball coach. Just because he understands the spatial mechanics and the timing and the athleticism and what it is that you needto be successful at those games.”

Sullivan got the men’s volleyball GA position in his second year of grad school but he was still deciding whether he wanted to coach soccer or volleyball. During his final semester he decidedhe would pursue a college coaching job in volleyball with a PE Master’s and Athletic Administration concentration.

After interviewing for Athletic Director positions at several private schools, Sullivan took a job at a college in Davenport, Iowa. He was paid $16,000 to be the men’s volleyball coach, sports information director and admissions counselor. The school is no longer open.

A year later he filled Byron’s head coaching job at Springfield. Since then, his list of accolades has continuedto grow.

Sullivan’s coaching prowess and knowledge of sports psychology – his favorite class to teach – has led some of Springfield’s greatest coaches to invite him to speak with their teams. His office in Blake Arena is on the end of a hallway with men’s and women’s basketball coaches Charlie Brock and Naomi Graves, as well as women’s volleyball coach Moira Long. They call it the “Hall of Fame Suite.”

This year, before the women’s basketball team began its historic run to the Sweet 16, Graves asked Sullivan to address her players. He spoke with them about climbing a skyscraper. He talked to the Pride again after they earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament, and once more before the team left for the third round in Kentucky.

“He will tell you this, ‘When you’re going into the NCAA Tournament, it’s not so much about basketball or volleyball anymore. It’s about the culture,” Graves said. “You already know your basketball, it’s about your culture and what you stand for.”

The Springfield College men’s volleyball team was the favorite to win the Division III Championship in 2020, with its 19-2 record and No. 1 national ranking. The Pride had six regular-season games remaining on their schedule and just over a month before the NCAA Tournament when the world stopped.

Once the confusion surrounding COVID-19 began to clear, all that was left was disappointment after the balance of the season – and the NCAA Tournament –was canceled.

The next season, after becoming the first team to host an in-person athletic event at Springfield College in March 2021, the men’s volleyball team was only able to complete six matches. Despite their 5-1 record and No. 2 national ranking at the end of the season, the Pride didn’t receive a bid into the 2021 NCAA Tournament.

It wasn’t their fault, nor was it anyone else’s. Because of COVID cases – mostly involving their opponents, but some of their own – 18 matches were canceled.

The team was looking forward to a full, somewhat “normal” season in 2021-22

when the virus infiltrated again on Monday, Feb. 7 – this time it got Sullivan.

He was in disbelief. Is this really happening again?

Sullivan went right to Five Guys, ordered curbside pickup, and spent the rest of the day bummedout. Just like after the fateful coin flip, he was upset for maybe a nanosecond, and immediately began coming up with a solution the next day.

Obviously there was no way for him to get inside Blake Arena, to coach his team from the sideline for its match against Nichols that Thursday, and he would still be out for Saturday’s tri-match that featured Stevens, the No. 2-ranked team in the country.

“It was very nerve-wracking,” Sullivan said. “It’s not like you’re nervous that our guys can’t play without me, but you just live to be involved. Just like that game in Vicenza versus that basketball team – that was the day I realized this is what gets me excited. This is my heart, this is my dream.

“When you can’t do that because of COVID, and you don’t have any symptoms, you’re just sitting in your bedroom, you’re antsy. Like everyone else, when you have desires and what you’re getting; there’s a huge gap between them, that causes trauma and stress.”

He returned to the drawing board, again, determined to outsmart the virus once and for all.

Sullivan coached Wednesday’s and Thursday’s practices over Zoom – a test run, if you will. He calculated that the Athletics webcast from Blake Arena was on a seven-second delay. The average volleyball rally lasts eight seconds. So he couldn’t just be on the phone.

The Grandmaster was going to call his shots over Zoom.

There is a sort of “unwritten rule” in volleyball, where anyone not on the bench cannot have communication with the bench. But unwritten rules can be broken. Sullivan went through the NCAA and the Championship Committee, as well as the USA Volleyball committee, for clearance to coach from home. It was a little weird, but what hasn’t been in the COVID world?

Thursday came, Nichols came, Sullivan didn’t. He logged onto Zoom and called senior libero Justin Brosnan, who was out with an injury. Brosnan stood on the sideline next to Graduate Assistant coaches Shaun Ermi and Steve Duhoux with an airpod in his left ear. Sullivan set up with the live Zoom and the webcast “replay,” and another screen showing the match stats, all in his bedroom.

It started out rough. The Pride looked different in the first set, very unlike the No. 1 nationally-ranked team. Sullivan wasn’t the only one out – two starters had also contracted the virus at the same time he did. The first set featured 13 tied scores and six lead changes before Springfield won 25-23.

Sullivan was too involved. A “control freak,” in his words.

He knew he neededto step back. It just wasn’t working with him in the middle. Springfield endedup defeating Nichols in a sweep to improve to 8-0. After all, Thursday night was a tuneup for Saturday.

Sullivan had coached big matches before. Some internationally in Rome and with the U.S. Volleyball team, and plenty in Blake Arena. None with as much stress as the three he coached from his Connecticut home.

“I wanted to say I did a load of laundry while I coached a volleyball match,” he said. “So I did a load of laundry.”

Saturday came and the operation was well-oiled. Springfield swept Stevens and then Rivier – the Pride didn’t lose a set without Sullivan.

“If we’re gonna play that well again I might just get the hell out of here, do a load of laundry every big match,” he joked. “The only thing that was good about it was the commute was a lot better. When I was done with practice I was in the kitchen like 30 seconds later. Everything else was nuts. Insane. Wacky.”

When Sullivan sat next to Greene in that room in Rome, they thought they’d be making a decision – the coin would be making a decision – that would impact the next couple of months.

Almost 30 years later, that loss has resulted in nearly 500 wins at Springfield, several stints with the United States National Team, a bronze Olym-

CALLING THE SHOTS

pic medal, 11 national championships and USA Volleyball’s All-Time Great Coach Award.

Nuts. Insane. Wacky.

A wall in Sullivan’s office is plastered with All-American plaques, one for each of the 59 honorees he’s coached during his 24-year tenure – aside from the most recent ones because he ran out of wall space. Chairs line the floor, several opened for sitting, others foldedup for more room, as souvenirs from National Championships.

Tucked away, out of sight from his desk on a shelf above the window, sit his five Molten National Championship trophies. He doesn’t look at them, but they are right there for recruits to see. The only trophies he does see are for second place. A new addition will soon glaree back at him after a 29-2 season in 2022 fell just short.

“Those are my favorite ones,” he said.

And he has the Springfield Volleyball creedpinned to his wall. The blue piece of paper outlines 13 promises he came up with sitting in church one day with his wife and three children. Lines 1-4 read:

Ibelievein Humanics, the almighty rulerof focusand distraction eliminator.And in Spirit, Mind and Body, the sonsand facilitators. WeareSCVB and webelievein maximum effort toward cohesion, communication and positivebody language.Webelievein forming, suffering, learningand asa result performingat a Championship level.

In 2017, the court on which Sullivan once took part in PEAC courses was transformedinto the site of the NCAA National Championship. Springfield fans clad in white floodedthe Blake Arena bleachers, and after the fourth set Sullivan stood calmly in his classic blue blazer and khakis, hugging his assistant coaches as the sea of white swallowed the team on the court. Confetti fell from the rafters as Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel” blasted on the speakers.

“You start with a 2,000-seat facility and before the game the fire marshal closes the door because there’s 2,500 people in the building. We only have 2,600 people who attend the school,” Sullivan said. “So right there it tells you a lot about the community that was here that day. I thought it was a celebration of Springfield College. I thought the way our guys played, acted, behaved and just the community there, it was just Springfield College throwing around its Humanics muscles a little bit.”

Sullivan has embodied the Humanics philosophy since his days playing Nintendo on the second floor of Alumni Hall with his “knucklehead” friends, since he was Chaz and as he maturedinto Charlie.

And, because of that coin toss in the little room in Rome, he is an all-time great coach who has helped build the most successful Division III men’s volleyball program in the country.

“I’ve always said this to Charlie,” Haley said. “‘You lost – but you won.’”

Noah Bleakley (left), Jack Simonetty (center) and Jack Cooney (right) are all fifth-years on the 2022 Springfield baseball team. The Student’s Chris Gionta quizzed them on why they stuck around for another season.

Women’s Lax? What’s the biggest differenceinthe teamsince your first year? Bleakley:The overall culture of our team has changed since my freshman year.I feel like everyone’s bought intothe system,where in past yearswe had some outliers. Just showing uptolift ontime, doing all the thingsyou need to be a successfulteam.Alot of the guys bought in the lastfewyears. What’s the most

THE NATIONAL STAGE

Football Chloe Dewhurst Women’s Volleyball Luca Brashear Softball

Moira Long – Women’s Volleyball

Moira Long’s favorite thing comes from a Christmas present she received a few years ago. When her son was in ninth grade, he worked tirelessly in his woodshop to carve the words “All I do is win” into a wooden board, including staying after class. The effort and content didn’t go without appreciation. “He kind of encapsulated his mother in that one gift,” said Long. “I am always saying that it is the best present I have ever gotten, because you get me. You get that I just want to win.”

TommyCrabill – Men’s Soccer

At first glance, the laptop stand in men’s soccer coach Tommy Crabill’s office seems nothing more than a creative homemade project. While not necessarily wrong, the backstory behind it represents something much more beautiful and unique. “I made it out of the same wood that I used to build the archway that my wife and I got married under,” he said. Crabill decided to make the pergola because he wanted to help his wife out any way that he could during the wedding planning process, especially with the added struggles from the pandemic. “The pandemic gave us so much stress - her so much stress - so I wanted to have something else for her to be excited about, and to take the pain away of all the work out of the wedding.”

Mark Simeone –Baseball

Baseball coach Mark Simeone does not have just one specific thing in his office that is his favorite, but two stand out more than the rest because of the team successes behind them. The first comes from 1999, when Springfield won the Division III New England ECAC Championship. “I just remember the joy from the players on that team who really had a good season, and ended with a postseason championship,” he said. The second plaque is from when he was a player here at Springfield College. His junior season the Pride won the Northeast State Championship. “Whenever I see those teammates, great stories, they are always entertaining and great to hear from. It is always great to remember those stories and memories with group success.”

KateBowen –Softball

With a 10-1 victory against Westfield State on March 26, 2022, softball head coach Kate Bowen pushed herself past the 100-career-win mark. But even with the recent milestone reached, she finds that her favorite thing is something that brings her back to when she first started. Framedand resting on her windowsill sits the game card from her first-ever win, a 4-3 victory against The College of New Jersey five years ago. She keeps the card with her because it stands for something bigger. “It’s a reminder of where I started and to work as hard as I did on day one.”

Another program from the NCAA is the “Leadership Collective.” Poisson said he has been in com- munication with the leader of this initiative, who organizes a sort of “pool” specifically for BIPOC professionals, administrators, and coaches. Colleges and universities are able to check the pool of vetted candidates, but Poisson said it’s competitive for a variety of reasons.

“You could imagine Division I schools are looking to hire a coach, Division II and Division III. And you could well imagine the going rate of coaches at Division I versus Division III … it’s your personal choice what drives you, and sometimes compensa- tion is that driver,” Poisson said.

According to the springfield.edu website, 21% of the student population self-identifies as a person of color. The undergraduate enrollment data from 2016-2020 on the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s page also shows there has been no in- significant increase nor decrease in BIPOC student enrollment during those four years.

So, when specifically asked why a BIPOC individual would want to come to Springfield College to become a head coach, Poisson said when candidates are looking for a job, “that person also has to feel it’s a fit and it’s a match, and that in of itself may prevent people from applying.”

the huddle that they still had five minutes left to play.

“I’m really proud of our kids for holding their focus,” Graves said. “Many players would fold in those circumstances, but none of them did.”

Overtime was a back-and-forth battle. With the game tied again with 11 seconds left, Springfield had the ball – and the opportunity to get the final basket.

After a deflection out of bounds, Springfield set up a baseline play with 1.1 seconds remaining that freed up Hourihan, who hit a mid-range jumper as time expired to lift the Pride into the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2005.

“That game felt like we won the championship,” Lyons said. “That was the game that I will always remember.”

The magic finally wore off for the Pride on April 11 in Lexington, Ky. – when they came up short

When it comes to Springfield, Poisson said the match truly has nothing to do with skin color — it all goes back to just being the right kind of per- son.

“The whole thing to me is teaching, because coaching is teaching, and you’re doing it in the classroom with walls and the classroom without walls. I think that’s the attractive piece about us that regardless of the color of your skin, or how- ever you define diversity, I hope would be attrac- tive to others,” Poisson said.

It appears the issue of the lack of BIPOC head coaches at Springfield is fueled by a variety of rea- sons from the top down, but it’s something Poisson and the rest of the College is well aware of and working to change — especially with the open positions in basketball and soccer.

Becoming a “diverse” institution is something Springfield has worked hard to accomplish and promote, and because many of the hurdles it faces are systemic, it is only natural that something that has been an issue for centuries will only be solved through time, hard work, and dedication.

Perhaps in the near future a BIPOC coach will be featured in a frame on Poisson’s wall.

against Trine University. Springfield finished with a 25-4 record. After the game, the players gathered at the middle of the court and hugged each other. The season was over, but the bond that had formed on that warm September day on the Senior Green would live on. And, along the way, the Posse had captured the campus’ collective imagination. “The Springfield community was amazing. It renewed my faith in why we are who we are,” Graves said.

Everyone from President Mary-Beth Cooper to members of the Springfield women’s gymnastics team – who held signs that spelled out P-O-S-S-E in Ithaca – had traveled to cheer them on.

“It was the most support we had ever had,” Lyons said. “The amount of people who reached out on campus was insane.”

“Women’s sports don’t get as many fans as men’s sports, and sometimes that’s really difficult for us,” Lyons said. “But this year it was different. We were good, and people wanted to watch us.”