Another kid from Goleta is making it big at the elite level of college coaching.
Dan Fisher, a 1994 Dos Pueblos alum, is the women’s volleyball coach at the University of Pittsburgh. His Panthers are 33-1, ranked No. 1 and playing in their fourth straight NCAA Tournament Final Four.
Pitt will play Atlantic Coast Conference rival Louisville in the semifinals on Thursday at the KFC Yum Events Center in Louisville.
Fisher’s success is a similar scenario to another Goleta kid’s experience as a major college coach. From 2005 to 2008, Ben Howland was a shining star on the national stage. He was guiding the UCLA men’s basketball team to a three straight NCAA Final Fours.
Ironically, Howland also coached at Pitt, rebuilding its men’s basketball program and taking back-to-back Big East regular-season titles and NCAA Sweet 16 appearances in 2002 and 2003 before taking the UCLA job.
Since his arrival in the Steel City, Fisher, 48, has been a culture changer at Pitt, a place known for its rich football history; it’s the alma mater of greats like Dan Marino, Tony Dorsett, Mike Ditka, Larry Fitzgerald, Hugh Green and Aaron Donald.
“I remember when I first got here having to tell people we had a volleyball team at the university,” Fisher said in a story on a Pitt Staff Council Coffee & Conversation event, reported on by Marty Levine of the University Times back in July.
Under Fisher’s guidance, the popularity of the women’s volleyball program has exploded at the school and in the community. The Panthers have a ridiculous record of 320-68 in his 12 seasons and have been to nine consecutive NCAA Tournaments. Pitt has won more matches than any other Division I program in the past five years.
On Thursday, Fisher was named the American Volleyball Coaches Association National Coach of the Year for Division 1.
Pitt hired Fisher in 2013 on the heels of him winning a national championship at the NAIA level. He led Concordia-Irvine to the women’s volleyball national title and was recognized as the NAIA/AVCA National Coach of the Year.
He’s experienced Final Fours as a player, too. After graduating from DP, where the legendary Mike Beresford coached him, he played at Hawai’i and went to the NCAA finals as a freshman and sophomore. The team lost in the semis in 1995 and finished as national runners-up the following year.
He transferred to Cal State Northridge and played there for one season and finished his collegiate playing career at Pacific. He played professional indoor volleyball in Europe for five years and also played on the AVP Pro Beach Tour back in the U.S.
Along the way, he got interested in coaching. His path to Pitt included stops at Pacific, the University of San Francisco and Hawai’i. He also coached USA Volleyball women’s teams in international competitions.
“I had some high school coaches that I really looked up to and I thought maybe I’d be a teacher or a counselor and maybe a high school coach,” he told the Coffee & Conversation crowd of a possible career choice after his playing career.
His love for the game and the joy of inspiring others led him into coaching.
“I had some great college coaches that I admired, and at the time I thought that it was appealing to be part of,” he said. “A nine-to-five was not appealing for me at that point in my life. I thought, ‘Hey, I’m around young people. I’m around people that are striving to be better all the time.’
“That was the appeal initially. … Then, when I started getting closer to being a head coach and running my own program — it’s a very specialized job — the rest is history.”
Fisher cited Joe Wortmann and Mike Hebert as having big impacts in his career. Wortmann was his coach at Pacific and Hebert is considered to be one of the “architects” of modern high-competitive volleyball. Fisher worked with him with USA Volleyball.
An AVCA Hall of Famer, Hebert played volleyball at UC Santa Barbara in the 1960s and coached men’s and women’s volleyball at Pitt in the late 1970s. He later built Minnesota into a powerhouse women’s program.
Said Fisher of Wortmann, “He was originally a high-school math teacher, so he really taught me how to lesson plan, and he was just a great man too, really cared about the guys on the team. And then Mike Hebert, who used to be the coach here, became a great mentor for me — not so much X’s and O’s but he was someone I could call.
“He would encourage me to think about all areas of the program. He was someone I could call with just bizarre scenario questions of, ‘Hey, have you ever had this happen with an administrator, or have you ever had this player say this?’”
Fisher cited effort, fundamentals, a culture of love and trust and gratitude as pillars of his coaching philosophy.
“Maybe a little different than other coaches is the way I look at failure,” he explained to the Coffee and Conversation group. “I certainly am not afraid to fail and I don’t want players that are afraid to fail. We have a saying called ‘practice winning.’ I don’t want to organize my practice plan or I don’t want my athletes to organize their day where they’re failing all day. We want to run drills where winning the drill is seven out of 10 or winning the drill is 20 in a row or winning the day is maybe you journaling for 10 minutes.
“When we talk about winning or having confidence, we want to start with competence, and I don’t think you become a really confident person or athlete when you’re failing all day long. We want them to have lots of successes … winning the day and feeling good about the work they put in.”
Fisher’s Panthers hope the work pays off with a national championship.
