AUBURN, Ala. – Teaching, it should come as no surprise for a coach with a doctorate in philosophy, will be the foundation of Brent Crouch's Auburn volleyball program.
"We just have to teach better than everybody else," said Crouch, who joined the Tigers in January after two seasons as the head coach at the University of Southern California.
Part of "a family of teachers," Crouch earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Texas A&M while playing club volleyball, then coached high school and club teams in Oregon to help pay bills while working on his doctorate.
"I had some transformative professors when I was in undergrad and I knew I wanted to be like that," said Crouch, who taught full-time at Oregon as an assistant professor for one year before feeling the pull toward coaching.
"I realized by the end of the year the kind of impact you can have on young people," he said. "It goes pretty deep, on the athletic side.
"I love teaching. I would have stayed in the classroom if I could have turned the classroom into a team that competed against other teams."
Coaching, Crouch says, combines his love of teaching with his thirst for competition.
"One hundred percent," he said. "Best of both worlds."
'You've got to be a great teacher': Brent Crouch orchestrated a remarkable turnaround at Portland before coaching at the University of Southern California
After four seasons as an assistant coach at Saint Mary's College, Crouch accepted the daunting challenge of rebuilding a Portland program that went 0-27 before he arrived. By his third season, Crouch was the West Coast Conference Coach of the Year.
"You're not going to rebuild teams quickly, really fast, through recruiting," he said. "That just takes a little while. We might be able to get a transfer here and there, and I expect that to happen, and some of them may be difference-makers, but the real high-level recruits, you need to get them on the front end, not through the transfer market, so that's going to be a few years out.
"That's typically the case with programs when you take them over, so what do you do in the mean time? In the mean time to get things going, you've got to be a great teacher."
Three factors motivated Crouch to come to the Plains: the SEC's volleyball emergence, the Auburn Athletics administrators he met during the interview process, and a desire to exchange Los Angeles traffic for a family-friendly environment for Brent and his wife Marcy's sons, ages 2 and 4.
"Coming in a time to build something, being on the forefront of that at a school that is very successful in many of the other programs, was exciting," he said. "SEC programs are investing in volleyball now in a way that maybe they weren't 15 years ago.
"I love leading teams but being on the right team is really, really important to me. The pride and the optimism, the professionalism and the hospitality - all of those things that make this place special - were obvious pretty quickly in talking with the staff here, so that was a huge piece for me.
"Being at a place where I could have my family near the program and near the school is a big deal. Us being around each other a little more, that's a big deal."
Crouch promises no magic wand or quick fix. Rather, his improvement plan aligns with the Auburn Creed's opening sentences, extolling the value of hard work.
"They're going to be long practices," he said. "There's going to be lots of video. There's going to be lots of technical instruction."
And meetings. To rebuild Portland's program, Crouch met daily with each player, reviewing video from the previous day's practice.
"Can we maximize the practice hour limits to be really efficient teachers?" he said. "When you have sharp folks in your program and you have good teaching, now you're ready to go."
At nearby Plainsman Park, Butch Thompson led Auburn to the College World Series with three cornerstones: attack, legacy and vision. Crouch will build Auburn's volleyball program with his own three-pronged values: relationships, empowerment and championship-level instruction.
"We need great relationships among the coaching staff. We need great relationships between the coaches and the players," he said. "We need to teach the players how to have great relationships with each other, and with the wider community. We can be deliberate about developing those things. That for us is the foundation of everything.
"No. 2 is empowerment. When you graduate you're going to be absolutely ready to take on anything because we've put you in situations for four years where your confidence is growing and growing and growing. You're empowered."
"The last thing is I think we're going to teach volleyball better than anyone else. I just really do. I haven't been in everybody's gym, but I've been in a few. I'm very confident that players that want to play at the absolute highest level, we can get them there if they come here.
"We'll show that to them very specifically when they're here on visits. Here's what you're going to learn in year one, here's what you're going to learn in year two, here's what your hitting efficiency is going to look like in year three when you get this in place, and when you get this other thing in place, now we're talking about you're walking into the gym at USA Volleyball and you're going to know exactly what's going in and you're going to be ready to play."
Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jeff_shearer