(Note: This story ran in May of 2023 after JJ Van Niel was hired and his first spring was coming to a close. Six months and 20-some wins later, we feel it is time to repost it on the website front and center).
By Alexa Taylor, Cronkite PR Lab
JJ Van Niel already had an extensive career in the volleyball world before joining Arizona State as the team’s newest head coach for the women’s volleyball team. But, surprisingly, the road to his volleyball career involved more numbers than sports.
Van Niel, a Southern Californian native, attended USC where he got a degree in finance and also played on the club hockey team. After graduation, he worked in the financial industry, analyzing and computing numbers for a dozen years. It was during this time that he rediscovered his love for the game of volleyball, which he had played in middle school.
During his free time, he would play recreational volleyball. One day, he mistakenly thought there was a game one night, and instead, found himself in the middle of club tryouts for a beach volleyball team. On a whim, he asked if he could help coach. The rest is history.
“I'll be honest to this day, I still don't know why I even asked this,” Van Niel said. “But I found the person running the trial and I just said, ‘Hey, do you ever need any extra help?’ I said I didn’t want to get paid because I don't know how often I could show up, but I knew I could probably do one or maybe two practices a week. I just want to try it out.”
Fortunately, Volleyball Hall of Fame member Mary Jo Peppler, the person running the trials, said, "Absolutely, we'd love to have you help.”
From there, Van Niel’s obsession with the game grew. He refers to himself as a “nerdy, obsessive analytic guy,” and proceeded to read every book on how to be a better coach, learned everything there is to know about the game, and made spreadsheets to track the data.
The data-driven side of him provided the opportunity to be able to go to Rio in 2016 and work with the analytics team there. From that relationship, he got recruited to be assistant coach at Utah, before returning to his alma mater, USC.
His volleyball journey has now led him now to the Valley of the Sun, where in January, he took on the role of head coach of the Sun Devils’ women’s volleyball team. Although he is still in his team’s offseason, he has extremely high ambitions for this year and has already strived to create a family atmosphere within the team.
“My team has been complete rockstars, working really hard,” Van Niel said. “They are super into everything we're doing as far as just building a culture and implementing the systems and vision that we have in the gym. The best part of my day is when I get to walk into the gym and work with the kids, or go to coffee with them, or sometimes we play games.”
Van Niel explained how he goes to coffee every week with a few of the players and gets to know them better as people, not just athletes. He said volleyball is hardly ever a topic of conversation. He likes to use this time to learn what they are doing outside of the gym, listen to anything they are going through, and develop a deeper bond with his athletes.
The family atmosphere of the team extends to his family as well. The team bonds over recreating the popular television cooking show, “Chopped.” The players have a set of ingredients and have to make a meal. Van Niel and his players have done this a few times, but recently they did it at Van Niels’ house. The team was able to interact with the coach’s kids and he got to have his two worlds come together and enjoy each other’s company.
“That might have been the most special thing of the spring for me, just because the players all came to my house,” Van Niel said. “They got to meet my wife and my kids, and that was really fun.”
Van Niel has also established community service in the team. The team attended an event for Read Across America, where the athletes were able to interact with young kids and read to them.
“I just had a great experience because we're giving back to the community and the kids were just amazing,” Van Niel said. “They were hugging the young women on our team and when we were leaving, they didn't want the players to go. It was just really cool to see.”
Through these culture-building experiences, Van Niel hopes this camaraderie and bonding will be on display on the court in the fall when the season starts.
“I am excited to see what we can put together, and see how well we can transfer the stuff we've been doing in the spring to the fall, and honestly, continuing building the culture,” Van Niel said. “I feel like we've built a strong culture, and I want to see how the ones that have been doing it can continue it to all the new faces that we have starting in the summer. Then we can really put it together on the court. I think we can surprise some people this fall, so I'm excited to give it a go and compete.”