The Collegian

Issue date: 9/18/08 Section: Sports

While head coach Chris Gravel and his nationally recognized volleyball players often get all the attention, assistant coaches stand outside the limelight.

The real coach

"The real coach," is the phrase used by Gravel to describe his head assistant coach Stephanie Gravel, also his wife.

"It would be a rude awakening if I ever had to do this job with out my wife," Chris said of the woman he met while coaching her college volleyball team. "She should have the head coach title."

Stephanie's role on the team includes promotion, recruiting, and fundraising. She filters thousands of e-mails from potential players and comes up with drills for practice, but lets her husband implement them. She creates the ideas, he uses them.

"This is the right fit for me," Stephanie said while nodding in affirmation."If I wanted to be a head coach, I could have by now."

She said she likes the detail work and adds what she calls "mental toughness" to the team.

Off the court, Stephanie, mother of 7-year-old daughter Brooklyn, cooks, travels and especially enjoys mowing the lawn. It is hard for her to pull away from her job when it is time to go home, Chris said.

As a husband-wife team neither Chris nor Stephanie sees working with each other as a negative.

"We hardly ever see each other during the day," Stephanie said.

"It's great because if we have a problem we work together as a team," Chris said. "We figure it out or we don't sleep."

Businessman
and a coach

Teamwork is key for both players and coaches on the team. And Rick Langston helps the Gravel coaches maintain this.

"He frees me and my wife up," Chris said of the assistant coach who he described as a "volleyball junkie."

Langston coaches volleyball only part-time. His other passion is running a multi-million dollar business - a grocery store in Ann Arbor called Hutches - with his brother-in-law. That takes up most of his other time.

"Coming to work relieves a lot of stress … depending on how well we play, that is," he said with a smile.

Langston, who has been coaching for eight years, helps in both practices and games. He runs the game-like drills and works equipment during the games that allows players to see playback.

Langston met Chris while playing on a volleyball team together. He said he has the fun part of the coaching job because all the pressure is not on him.

Langston said he loves his job, especially since his relationship with Chris is not a boss-employee relationship but a friend to friend one.

"Even if we didn't work together, we would still be great friends," Langston said.
He has a serious personality, which, he said, comes from running a business.

"Sometimes I am more serious than the girls would like, but we have fun," he said.

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