No Coasting in Newport Harbor Volleyball

They were standing in the gymnasium doorway, Rollerblades on their feet, foolishness in their hearts, two young boys ready to roll. The gym floor beckoned. How could they resist? This scene was made for shreddin’.

Don’t do it .

Coach Dan Glenn, sitting on the other side of the gym, didn’t say the words. He hoped his stern expression would say it for him. He figured anyone with half a brain would know that skating across the floor of the Newport Harbor gym--in the middle of volleyball practice, his volleyball practice--would be tantamount to disaster (if not a detention).

He figured wrong.

“Hey!” Glenn shouted as the skaters stepped on the floor. “ Hey! “

They looked up, dazed. Their expression the essence of a post-Halloween sugar buzz.

“Think!” Glenn said. “Think about what’s on your feet .”

More confused looks. Then . . . bingo. With skates clattering, they scrambled out the door.

Glenn shook his head and smiled. “Sometimes,” he said, “you’ve just got to try and encourage them to think a little bit.”

A little bit? Anyone who has played for Glenn could tell you a little bit doesn’t cut it. When it comes to digs, sets and spikes, this man practically requires a doctorate. Think. Think. Think. It’s a Dan Glenn motto. It’s Newport Harbor’s mantra. Think. Think. Think. No better way to play the game.

And the game, as the Sailors are playing it this year, doesn’t get much better. Not on the high school level, anyway. Newport Harbor (14-0) is the top-ranked team in Orange County and the Southern Section Division I. Thursday, with a 3-1 victory over archrival Corona del Mar, Newport Harbor clinched the Sea View League title, its first since 1987.

So Monday was a day of celebration, right? A time to bask in the glory of being No. 1? Well, no. Glenn, 34, started practice as he always does, by having his players go through their warm-up without a single word. That’s right. Ten teen-age girls gathered together without the least bit of chit-chat. No gossiping, no giggling, no stories about trick or treating. For about 10 minutes Monday, the only sound in the gym was the buzzing of the overhead lights.

“I want them quiet so they can think about practice,” Glenn says. “And because if it’s not quiet in here, it’s chaos.”

Considering Glenn’s penchant for discipline, that’s a bit difficult to believe. This is a man who, despite his beach boy looks and hey-dude surfer image, runs volleyball practice with a pit bull’s intensity. He doesn’t scream and shout as much as offer “suggestions.” His players know not to ask twice.

They also know never to call him by his first name. The D-word is strictly off limits.

“Yeah,” sophomore setter Jeannette Hecker says, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘If we even say ‘Dan,’ he tortures us.”

In other words, he makes them run. Of course, to most volleyball players, no torture is worse than that. Not that Glenn doesn’t squeeze in some fun once in a while. He has been know to take the players out for a post-match frozen yogurt. He took them on a surfin’ safari last summer. He encourages playing different sports outside the volleyball season and attends their other competitions as often as possible.

Glenn, a volleyball, basketball and football player while at Huntington Beach High, says Oiler basketball Coach Roy Miller influenced much of his coaching style, as did former Corona del Mar coach--and local volleyball guru--Charlie Brande. In their view, and in Glenn’s view, practice is everything.

“Charlie’s thing is, ‘I’m going to make (practice) so hard, if you make it through this, the rest will be a piece of cake,” Glenn says. “Sometimes you got to be sort of brutal. I don’t want them to be complacent.

“They have trouble understanding that sometimes. They’re like, ‘Coach, we just won league . . . ‘ I guess they’re right in a way. I should enjoy it more. But for me it’s not the winning or losing. It’s the process.”

A process that--big shock here--hasn’t made all the people happy all the time. At Newport Harbor, where volleyball expectations weigh as much as the two-ton anchor that graces the front of the school, Glenn has had to face his share of detractors, namely a few parents convinced they know more about volleyball than he does.

It’s one of the reasons Glenn doesn’t have a booster club. “No one is going to influence my decisions,” he says.

And don’t the Sailors know it.

“Last year we were little brats,” Hecker, the setter, says. “This year we know what it takes.” And what would that be? Hecker paused a moment, bracing herself for what she was about to say.

“You have to listen and work hard every play and concentrate all the time,” she said, pained to admit it. “And . . . you have to do what the coaches say.”

You certainly do. Because when you’re on a roll, nobody skates. Not at Newport Harbor.