Ohio coach Geoff Carlston: volleyball’s King Midas
By Jason Robinaugh, Staff Writer
March 31, 2007 | 5:01 p.m.
It’s said that coaches wear many hats, and after Saturday’s 3-0 win, Ohio volleyball coach Geoff Carlston had to shout over the noise in the Rohr Room to quiet the group of fans ready to ask questions of his team.
“Geez, I feel like a fricking schoolteacher,” Carlston said, laughing.
Carlston, the force behind the team which was ranked No. 21 last season, has plenty of reasons to smile this season. He celebrated his 100th career victory earlier this year when his Bobcats (16-3) beat Buffalo on Sept. 23 to cement his status as one of the winningest coaches in school history and after adding Saturday’s win over Akron, his record during his four seasons at Ohio stands at 106-11.
The coaching ‘White Boy’
Behind all the statistics and acclaim, however, Geoff Carlston is a humble, amiable Minnesotan with no shortage of entertaining stories.
He received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota, where he also played outside hitter for the men’s volleyball team. While at Minnesota he majored in speech communications with an emphasis in youth development. He attributed an interest in ethnic conflict and politics to his grandfather’s mayoral position and a trip to Washington, D.C when he was 15.
"I ended up meeting a bunch of people, but I also ended up walking the streets and hanging out with street people and protesters and stuff like that, and I’ve always kind of gravitated toward that,” Carlston said.
After college, Carlston and a friend traveled on a 12,000-mile motorcycle journey of the small roads throughout the western United States. The trip took him from Minnesota to Las Vegas, then through California and back to Colorado.
He stayed in Colorado through a ski season, skiing and working in the mountains. Calling it “a pretty cool life” but not able to see it as a long-term option, Carlston returned to his home state to teach and coach volleyball at Hopkins High School in Minnetonka, Minn.
Carlston’s interest in ethnic and social problems led him to join the Peace Corps in 1996, after two years at Hopkins. His Peace Corps job took him to Belize, where he taught math and physical education at a school for the deaf.
“In any given day I would speak sign language, Spanish, Creole or English, depending on where I was,” Carlston said.
Even though he was thousands of miles away from home, volleyball still followed. Carlston worked as an assistant coach and helped build a year-long training program for the Belizean men’s, women’s and youth national volleyball teams. He traveled to almost every Central American country helping to build the teams.
“I got really immersed in the culture through volleyball. I hung out and spent time, so I learned Creole really well,” Carlston said. “Basically my nickname was ‘White Boy’ all over Belize.”
His job as schoolteacher evaporated when the school for the deaf closed. Carlston then worked developing conflict resolution curriculum for schools and to help curb an enormous gang problem.
“I can probably do better than that”
After his Peace Corps tour, Carlston took a volunteer assistant position for his Minnesota’s volleyball team under recently inducted Hall of Fame coach Mike Hebert. For two years under Hebert’s influence, Carlston “learned a ton” and then took his first collegiate head coaching job with Division II Concordia University-St. Paul.
He certainly had his work cut out for him. When he arrived, the Golden Bears had never won a match against a D-II opponent and suffered through an overall 9-32 season the year before, including an 0-18 conference record.
“I was thinking, ‘I can probably do better than that,’” Carlston said.
In 2000, his first season as leader of the Bears, Carlston coached the team to an 11-17 record with a 6-12 conference record. The next year Concordia improved to 14-6 with a 10-8 conference record. In Carlston’s final season as head coach, the turnaround was complete as the team finished the season with a 25-9 record and a 13-5 conference record.
The improvement didn’t stop once Carlston left, however. One of his assistant coaches, Brady Starkey, took control of the Bears and led them to national D-II prominence, including a No. 1 ranking in 2004. Currently, the team holds the No. 7 ranking and has a perfect 14-0 record in conference play.
“For him, it’s not about wins and losses,” Starkey said. “He tries to get the best out of [players], in academics, athletics and life in general.”
Starkey said he learned the most important ability he learned from Carlston is attention to detail and to “not accept that someone can’t do something.”
Arrival in Athens
On Feb. 6, 2003 Carlston was named the head coach of the Ohio volleyball team.
While the program finished 25-9 the year before Carlston’s arrival, his presence helped the team win a regular season Mid-American Conference title, a MAC tournament championship and a NCAA Tournament appearance in his first year at the helm.
Since his first year, the Bobcats have lost one MAC match and have built a 39-match winning streak at home. Carlston has won three consecutive MAC Coach of the Year Honors and NCAA Midwest Coach of the Year honors for two years running.
“He’s a very hands-on, intense coach who believes in basic instruction,” said assistant coach Nadia Edwards. “He really believes in preparing [players] for the real world.”
Senior setter Savanah Parra shared her arrival at Ohio with Carlston’s and has been a part of the three-time MAC champion teams.
“I believed in what Geoff was promoting as far his philosophies, how he treated the team and how he goes about coaching,” Parra said. “I think that’s really contributed to our success.”
Away from the court
Outside of his job, Carlston enjoys spending time at his Cedar Falls home with his wife Sara, including reading, listening to music and watching TV.
He counts “Grey’s Anatomy” and “South Park” among his favorite shows and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” as one of his favorite movies, keeping a picture from the movie in his office.
He also enjoys bike rides around Athens and other exercise. Musically, his tastes span the spectrum, from Miles Davis to Marilyn Manson to ministry music.
“I don’t claim to be a big huge music fan, I just listen to a lot of music,” he said. “The thing I really don’t get into is country.”
One of Carlston’s biggest strengths, however, may be his personality off the court.
“He’s a great person to hang out with,” Edwards said. “He’s very easy to approach.”
What’s next for Carlston
With most college coaches moving on to bigger schools as they succeed, many have wondered if and when Carlston will leave Athens to turn around another program.
“I think a lot of people expect that progression,” he said. “Honestly, I think people are starting to find out kind of out there nationally what a good job this is.”
He said that he counts the attendance and community support as unusual aspects of the job that he doesn’t take lightly.
“There’s not many, I would say, are better jobs out there than the one I have,” he said. “For me, especially now that I’m married, geography might come in to play. I do like the ocean and I do like the mountains.”
He cites geography as one of the major factors that would draw him away from Athens and the difficulty Ohio has in receiving respect playing in the MAC. When one conference loss could derail national title hopes, the pressure increases with every match. He did, however, stress that the positives at Ohio outweigh the negatives.
If Carlston ever decides to leave, he will be probably be lauded as one of the school’s greatest coaches. For the “White Boy” coach from Minnesota, “Ohio legend” probably wouldn’t be a bad hat to wear, either.