Hugh McCutcheon: Team power outweighs individual desire
Issue: Volume 30 Number 3
When US men’s volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon took his team into the Beijing Olympic competition his goal was to ‘out-team’ the highly fancied Russians and Brazilians to be in the running for a medal.
Yet this would require the Americans to work cohesively as a unit — a concept they had struggled with in the past.
‘We knew we couldn’t out-speed the Brazilians and that we weren’t as physical as the Russians, so one of our big points was to “out-team” them,’ McCutcheon explained.
‘We had to get the team beyond the idea that we were looking for star players. We didn’t want to compete with an “all-star” team. We wanted 12 functioning individuals who were invested in a team goal and looking towards the same outcome.’
The strategy paid dividends when the United States defeated defending champions Brazil in Beijing to win their country’s first men’s volleyball medal since 1992 and first gold medal since 1988.
The groundwork for moulding a new team culture was laid just prior to 2005 when New Zealand-born McCutcheon took over as the US men’s team coach.
McCutcheon had previously served as a volunteer assistant coach for the men’s national team in 2001 and 2002, and became full-time assistant coach in 2003.
In McCutcheon’s first year as head coach of the US men’s team in 2005, they won five medals in five tournaments including silver at the International Volleyball Federation World Grand Champions Cup in Japan.
‘When a team is winning, it’s much easier to have them stay on the path, but it can mask issues that will rear up later,’ McCutcheon said.
A number of injuries hampered team preparations as they went into the World League competition in May where they finished tenth. Injuries and performance problems led to experimenting with different line-ups and combinations of players ahead of the November World Championships in Japan.
McCutcheon said that they ‘went into the Championships with the best team on paper, but they certainly hadn’t had the continuity of play or preparation’. The team again finished tenth and their world ranking dropped from fifth to eighth.
Among the reasons McCutcheon cites for the result was ‘interpersonal dysfunction’ and immediately after the tournament he ‘called the group out on what was going on’.
‘Many of them were invested in their own careers. It was unhealthy and was preventing us from achieving our goals. Everyone needs to buy into team goals. Players need to ask themselves, “Where can I add value to this team?”.’
As the team moved into the 2007 playing year, McCutcheon began to do more work on interpersonal activities.
‘We worked on issues such as talking to individuals about the problems you might have with them rather than talking to others, and building more of a culture of trust. Trust can be eroded so quickly but it can also be the most powerful tool in a team setting.
‘There had been problems in the gym where players were choosing to air some of their issues in an unconstructive way. I actually had one of my assistant coaches do nothing but watch the exchanges going on in the gym to prevent a lot of that.’
McCutcheon said the changes were incremental but had to be implemented consistently and practised on a daily basis.
‘We had to make the guys realise that their behaviour off the court should mirror their behaviour on the court, and to understand the feeling of being happy playing on a team where everyone is working in the same direction.
‘We were basically moving away from a coach-centred model of training to more of a player-empowerment model, but within the limits of that.
‘Added to it all was the fact that losing sucks and that’s a wonderful motivation for players who are disillusioned to look for a potentially better pathway and be prepared to buy into it.’
It took time. The team failed to immediately qualify for the Beijing Olympics when they finished in fourth place at the 2007 International Volleyball Federation World Cup. But at the start of 2008 the US men won five straight matches without dropping a set to win the qualifying championship and gain entry to the Olympic competition.
And the Olympic competition demonstrated just how far the team had come. Before they even began the competition McCutcheon’s father-in-law was fatally stabbed while touring Beijing and his mother-in-law was critically injured.
McCutcheon missed the first three games to be with his wife, former volleyball Olympian Elisabeth Bachman, who witnessed the attack.
McCutcheon said that in the haze of what was happening one thing he knew was that the events would be a ‘litmus test … it would either fracture or unite the team’.
History will reflect that it united them. McCutcheon said he watched some of those three winning matches on television as events unfolded around him. ‘I’m proud of a few things in my life, and one of them is the performance of the team,’ he said. ‘It gave us all a wake-up call as to what’s important and the wonderful opportunity that we all had in being at the Olympics.’
McCutcheon joined the team for the remaining five matches that led to them securing the gold medal. Afterwards he spoke to each player individually. ‘I wanted to acknowledge the journey that each person takes to get to that point, to reach closure with each player on that particular chapter and, importantly, to know how much they had contributed to the team.’
