WVU's Kramer a Rising Star
August 12, 2010 01:40 PM | General
August 12, 2010
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – When Jill Kramer was an assistant coach at the University of Virginia, she spent time recruiting a young outside hitter from Stratford High School in Houston named Mary Ellen Luck. Although Kramer wasn’t successful in landing Luck, she did make quite an impression on Mary Ellen’s father.
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| Jill Kramer helped recruit two of the best signing classes in Virginia history the previous two years.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Earlier this week, Mary Ellen’s father, which just happens to be West Virginia University Director of Athletics Oliver Luck, named Jill Kramer the school’s new volleyball coach.
“She has extensive experience with USA Volleyball, which I think is going to serve us very well in terms of her ability to identify young talent and bring them to Morgantown,” Luck said.
Kramer was the top recruiter for a rebuilding Virginia Cavalier program the last two years, helping put together the two best recruiting classes in school history for third-year coach Lee Maes. Virginia has only enjoyed modest success during Maes’ two seasons in Charlottesville, but that is likely to change this year with a strong nucleus of players returning, thanks in large part to Kramer’s strong recruiting ties.
“She played a major part in that,” said Maes of his two nationally recognized recruiting hauls. “That was her role as our recruiting coordinator and something I have had a lot of experiences with in my past in that position. When I took the job here at the University of Virginia, I knew that she could assume that role and obviously because of her work ethic, her personality, her ability to communicate and her ability to cultivate relationships, those things are really important in the recruiting process.”
Maes first found out about Kramer the way coaches usually find out about other coaches – he was recruiting some of her players. From there Maes began to realize that Kramer also had a gift for coaching.
“I saw her coaching her club team Alamo Volleyball Club back in Las Vegas, maybe four or five years ago; she had a very successful team at that time with a couple of prospects I was evaluating and I had the opportunity to see that she had a skill set as a volleyball coach,” sad Maes.
Other big-name coaches around the country have seen the same thing. Michigan’s Mark Rosen, who has led the Wolverines to NCAA tournament appearances in nine out of the last 11 years, including the school’s first ever trip to the Elite Eight in 2009, saw in Kramer a young, ambitious coach who was eager to learn.
“I think there are some coaches out there that are so engrossed in climbing the ladder and they make connections, but they don’t learn along the way and she is very much someone who is a student of the game,” Rosen explained.
Earlier this summer, the two worked together coaching the USA A2 team and Rosen was impressed with Kramer’s adaptability.
“The guy that she worked for at Virginia is very different than me and I kind of was a little concerned when we were coaching together, feeling that she would say, ‘Well, this is how we do it at Virginia’ and she was never that way,” Rosen said. “She was like, ‘Hey, that’s kind of a cool way of doing things and I would have never thought of doing it that way.’ I look at that as a huge strength in coaches when they are willing to look at things from other perspectives.”
California coach Rich Feller, Volleyball Magazine’s national coach of the year in 2007, hasn’t had the opportunity to coach with Kramer, but he knows her well from the recruiting trails.
“She’s in the gym long hours at the recruiting tournaments as are most of the dedicated ones in her profession,” Feller added. “She always seems to have energy and always seems to be moving from court to court at a pretty brisk pace. She doesn’t hang around and shoot the breeze for a long period of time, but at the same time she is very cordial and friendly.”
Maes believes Kramer is a budding star in the profession.
“I think the coaching is going to take care of itself,” he said. “Her background and the people she has been around at the various programs she has been in, and her exposure to coaching at the international level, is going to allow her to take care of that aspect in the gym.
“As far as West Virginia’s ability to be able to continue to grow volleyball into national prominence, first in the conference, and second nationally, it still comes down to recruiting and that is the biggest strength she has going for her,” Maes said.
Volleyball is like many sports today in that the recruiting cycle is accelerated, meaning the top programs are now eyeing the best high school freshmen and sophomores. Because Kramer was hired one day before the beginning of the preseason, she is going to have to play catch-up with the rest of the programs in the Big East.
“Any coach that goes into it now has to realize it takes longer to fix a program, change a program or move a program in a different direction because it’s so tough to get those (elite) kids,” said Rosen. “The one good thing for programs building is that there is a little bit of a higher rate of transferring now during the offseason … players are transferring to different schools and coaches that are changing things around might be able to pick up a couple of players that could help.”
However, Rosen isn’t necessarily a believer in the quick-fix approach.
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| Kramer was involved in a pair of NCAA tournament trips during her brief stay at Alabama.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
“You see some coaches go in their first year and try to blow it up really fast and wash all of the kids out of the program and bring in all these new kids and bring in transfers and maybe kids that have some sketchy backgrounds to try and build it fast and I just never see that working as well,” Rosen said.
“We felt like when we came to Michigan several years ago that we wanted to build it a little slower because we were going to build it on character kids and kids that wanted to come in and gradually take our program to another level.”
Feller agrees.
“Really it takes a couple of classes,” he said. “It takes a generation of athletes, which is really a three-to-four year transition period, but certainly any recruiting class can make a difference and set a tone with each one that follows.
“If turning it around is 50 percent more wins than the year before then right away, one class can do that,” he added. “If it’s winning a championship in your conference and advancing to the third round of the NCAAs, well, that may take a few more classes.”
Feller, now in his 12th year at Cal, has seen young, energetic coaches come into stagnant programs and infuse life right away.
“My experience has been in the first year of a new, energetic head coach things change for the positive pretty fast to a certain degree and then the building starts from there,” he said. “Really, the energy a new coach brings to the gym – if they’re the right coach, and I think Jill is – will turn around heads and make people reevaluate and people that maybe didn’t have as much motivation will suddenly gain motivation because they can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“I see championships,” Kramer stated the afternoon she was hired. “Why wouldn’t you? We’ve got all the tools that you need here. We’ve got great facilities; great support academically, a great staff and a great department to help with that.”
Rosen can see that eventually happening at West Virginia with Kramer piloting the ship.
“I think West Virginia is a school with a good name and a good reputation and Jill has a good name and a good reputation and she’ll get it going there,” he said.
