Brande X : Coach Hopes to Make Lightly Regarded UCI Men’s Volleyball a Top-Shelf Program

Charlie Brande is walking like Quasimodo--legs stiff, bending over, head slightly turning toward the left, shouting as he shuffles along.

“Bend your knees, bend your knees.”

Out on the volleyball court, his UC Irvine men’s team is unraveling like Watergate. The Anteaters are playing LaVerne, not Stanford, not UCLA, not even Long Beach State. LaVerne, a team that has won two of 21 matches. They should be gobbling them up like chocolate-covered cherries. Brande knows this.

His mood changes. He’s now jumping like Richard Simmons.

“Hustle up, hustle up, let’s go.”

It doesn’t help. Another point by Azusa Pacific, then another. The Anteaters treated the Leopards harshly in the first game, beating them, 15-4. However, they lost the second, then the third.

Now, in the fourth game, Brande is dredging up all he has learned in more than 20 years of coaching volleyball, trying to prevent the unthinkable. At last, he resorts to sarcasm.

Looking directly at senior Chris Harger, Brande shouts, “You’re real cool, huh? Real cool. You’re not so cool now.”

Azusa Pacific closes out the victory. Brande smiles, congratulates LaVerne Coach Don Flora, pats a couple Leopard players on the back, then leads his team into the locker room.

Does a guy with Brande’s reputation need this stress?

*

A day later and Brande is all smiles. Sure, he would rather have his wisdom teeth yanked by pliers than lose to an inferior opponent, but the sun did come up this morning.

Today’s subject, though, is accountability.

“In the classroom, you can mask behind the masses,” Brande said. “What you do is not as evident. Here, it really is, and we need to get some people who thrive on success.

“There are some obstacles to overcome. We have to bring in some recruits that have the philosophy of success.”

In all his years, this may be Brande’s biggest challenge. He has come home to make Irvine’s volleyball program what it has never been . . . a winner.

That would seem easy for Brande, who played basketball on Irvine’s first team in 1966. Orange County Volleyball, his women’s club, has won 22 national titles since 1982. Balboa Bay Volleyball, his men’s club, has won 13 since 1976. His Corona del Mar girls’ teams were always among the elite.

But the Anteaters finished 9-14 in 1995, their best record ever. They won’t break that in this, Brande’s first season. Irvine is 6-16, has lost seven of its last eight matches and will hand Brande his first losing season.

Brande, though, paints with broad strokes.

“All the people in the volleyball world who know me have asked, ‘What are you going to be doing next year,’ ” Brande said. “I have to tell them, ‘No, No, No, we’re here for three or four years to see what is going to happen.’ After looking at this situation, it’s very doable. Where else can you live at the beach, surf, play volleyball and still go to school? [UC] Santa Barbara, Pepperdine and Irvine.

“We can build this into a top program. I don’t know if we can ever compete with UCLA or Stanford, just because those schools can offer things we can’t offer. But if we start winning some games, people are going to come watch, and we can be somewhere near the top.”

*

Brande has been the college route before, as an assistant at Hawaii and UCLA. But this is his first college head coaching job.

It was a coup, to those in volleyball circles, when Irvine Athletic Director Dan Guerrero landed him. Brande has been a household name for years, at least to those interested in volleyball. His club teams are considered among the best in the nation.

“His reputation is fantastic,” Huntington Beach Coach Rocky Ciarelli said. “I was a little surprised that he would take a shot at it. To build a program there is going to take a lot of work. Charlie is a pretty busy guy.”

Brande is not a full-time coach at Irvine, but then, with his club teams, who needs another full-time job? There is little scholarship money available, yet Brande envisions a packed Bren Center with money going back into the program to bring in more quality players.

Add to the mix the fact that Brande is an Irvine graduate and a Newport Beach resident, and the job looked pretty appealing. So much so that Brande had talked to Guerrero when the women’s job opened a year ago.

“It was kind of a change of pace,” Brande said. “I actually had talk to people at USC about that job. The problem was, I would have to commute up there. I love where I live, I love the community and my family is here. I love being able to ride my bike to work.”

The upside to Irvine was clear to Guerrero.

“Charlie Brande is not only known on the local level, he’s known regionally and nationally,” Guerrero said. “That name recognition provides exposure for the program.”

That recognition comes through years of coaching on the club level, a job he continues. It leads some to see him feeding the Irvine program with his own products.

“Having someone like Charlie is a plus,” Ciarelli said. “If he does get those kids, it’s going to help quite a bit. I think you are going to see Irvine make a climb.”

It is not unusual for club coaches to take college jobs. Under NCAA rules, a school can hire a coach who has a club team within a 50-mile radius. The potential for developing a feeder program seems more than possible.

This has come up before with Brande. In 1990, he was suspended as Corona del Mar’s coach while Southern Section officials investigated whether he violated rules by coaching club players with high school eligibility remaining. Brande agreed not to coach during the 1990-91 season but was allowed to come back the next year. He decided not to return.

To date, the only people to follow Brande to Irvine are assistant coaches Jason Bilbruck, Travis Turner and Rich Polk--who also coach his club teams--and Cassie Werhas, who plays for his women’s club team and has orally committed to Irvine.

The rules are strict. Brande said he is not allowed to wear UC Irvine shirts or hats when coaching his club teams. Nor can he talk to them about Irvine during noncontact periods.

“I almost have two lives,” Brande said. “One of the major things I do as a club coach, especially with the girls’ team, is place kids in colleges. With the girls, I’m on the phone to college coaches all the time.

“I’m sure there are people saying ‘Now they are all going to go to Irvine.’ But in college, there are only a few scholarships out there for the men and there are only a few really good players.

“We need to be very careful because of the exposure we have.”

Still, everyone on his club teams knows he coaches at Irvine.

“I don’t see it as a problem,” said Long Beach State women’s volleyball Coach Brian Gimmillaro, who also coaches a club team. “I believe in the free enterprise system. If a kid gets better because of Charlie and the kid likes Charlie and the kid wants to play for Charlie, I don’t see anything wrong with that. The other side is the risk you take. You can develop a player who goes to another school, then comes back to beat you.

“If he gets some of his own club players, more power to him.”

*

Most players like playing for Brande, though he is an acquired taste.

“Actually, it reminded me of when I played football,” said Harger, a 6-foot-10 middle blocker. “But some guys didn’t like it.”

Brande can be intense, sarcastic and downright truthful till it hurts.

In 1986, there was an official complaint when he was accused of physically abusing players at Corona del Mar. The complaints were looked into, Brande was cleared, then fired for insubordination. He was rehired the next year.

The subject still burns with Brande.

“It has nothing to do with this job,” he said.

“Someone, years ago, made comments about my practices, but he had never attended one. How can you say something negative about it when you’re never been there?

“When something goes wrong in practice, I say it the way it is. Sometimes I’ll be very sarcastic about it, sometimes I’ll be extreme.

“[Irvine reserve setter] Kevin Dake works very hard, but his hands are like pitchforks when he touches the ball. People asked me, ‘How can you say a guy has hands like pitchforks?’ Well, he does. Now we realize this and can figure out how to solve that problem.”

Irvine players came around to that way of thinking slowly.

“Charlie has been trying to get that inner fight going with us,” Harger said. “I think we have had our butt kicked for so long that it’s hard to get that winning feeling.

“He puts on a great show. He pulls his hair, pulls out his shirt and gets red in the face. Of course, the next moment, he’s telling a joke to one of the assistants.

“It goes back to that old saying, ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.’ ”

*

Brande does not intend to stay thirsty. He does not like losing.

“I tried everything [against LaVerne] that night,” he said. “Nothing worked. I felt helpless.

“Before we teach strategy, we have to teach the philosophy. You find the right button and push it. Hopefully, you get to a point where you don’t have to push the button, they take care of it.”

Just when that day will be is not clear, but there is a timetable.

Tuesday, the Anteaters close the season against UCLA in the Bren Center and Brande probably won’t see a full house. Wednesday, Brande starts working toward next season, and the next.

“We look at this as a three-year picture,” he said. “It’s doable. It’s very doable.”