Out-teaming the world: the secret to U.S. volleyball's success

As Jordan Larson listened to the woman on the Zoom call, taking over the conversation with her energetic zest, firing left and right with motivational appeals to the power of unity and teamwork, she kept asking herself the same question. 

Who is this woman? 

An opposite hitter on the U.S. Olympic volleyball team, Larson learned before the call that Sue Enquist played and coached softball at UCLA, where her extraordinary run of success — leading the Bruins to their first national championship before guiding them to another 11 titles as a coach — is legendary in the sport. But she'd never heard someone talk about the power of a team's culture this way before. Enquist spoke about the need to create a player-driven culture, finding the human in each teammate, and the importance of helping teammates recover from failures. 

With the Tokyo Olympics looming, Larson felt the team wasn't prepared. It was capable — head coach Karch Karaly told Enquist the team had the talent to win the first gold medal for the U.S. — but the chaos of the pandemic added to the challenges of forming a true team out of young women who were scattered around the globe playing professionally most of the year. 

"I was like, 'How do we get her, like, part of us?'" Larson said of the coach who would become the team's culture consultant. "Because we need to build something, because something doesn't sit, right." 

Today, with a roster loaded with former NCAA champions and returning gold medalists from the Tokyo Games, Larson calls Enquist the "greatest asset" to a group of players who have exuberated toughness at the Paris Olympics. The team has overcome a key injury and an opening loss to China to reach Sunday's gold medal match against Italy. 

That success can't be attributed to significant lineup changes, hot streaks or strokes of luck, players say. It's come from a team culture that has empowered the players to solve their own problems, remain energetic and supportive in the face of failure, and provide one another with a sense of safety in the tensest moments. 

They sum it up in a cultural motto: We're going to out-team the world. 

"I love this idea because it's this image of this tight huddle," middle blocker Haleigh Washington said. "It's not so much about the technical side. It's not about the volleyball or how we can serve it better. It's about how can, when the going gets tough and our backs are against the wall, how can we still rise up when the volleyball is not going great? 

"The world is good at volleyball. And so we might not always out-volley them. But I think we can out-team them all the time." 

Enquist started forming her culture-building concepts toward the end of her coaching tenure at UCLA. After all her championship success, she started to look more deeply into the hearts of her players to understand what influenced their performances. She found that the extra work developing their skills in practices or the added time focusing on strategy had less of an impact than if she empowered them to solve their own problems, respond positively to failures, and understand their teammates as humans rather than jersey numbers and positions on the field. 

Since retiring from UCLA in 2006, Enquist has taken those lessons from the softball field to teach them in college leadership courses, share them with other sports teams and even present them to corporations. Whatever the setting, she preaches the importance of giving grace, taking time to understand other people's life paths, supporting them in moments of struggle, and appreciating the immense return on investment that comes from offering gratitude. 

"These simple concepts are the most difficult to master," Enquist said. "Culture's not a product. It's not an event. Culture is every interaction. It's every conversation. Culture is like the baby: You have to keep your eye on it 24-7 and feed it many times a day." 

So even though the U.S. team is composed of players who learned how to win in some of college volleyball's most successful programs, from some of the sport's strongest cultures — national powerhouses like Nebraska, Wisconsin, Texas and Stanford — implementing what they learned was a different challenge. 

Coming together on the U.S. national team, the players were under the constant pressure of a roster that reformed year over year, and they were scattered around the globe playing professionally for half the year. It required a different approach to culture building, one that the players would have to lead. 

"In college it's very streamlined," setter Jordyn Poulter said. "You're bought into a culture for four years, and that's what you sign up for. Whereas when you're a professional, there's a lot of moving parts. You're overseas for a lot of the year, and we still do our work during that time, both on and off the court. And so I think it's really important to stay connected in those months … to still be able to build within USA volleyball and connect with each other." 

The core of Enquist's approach is to approach the team as a group of human beings rather than as positional specialists. 

If they could understand the life paths or daily stresses of their teammates, they could look across the court and understand what might trigger them in a tense moment. If they could give one another grace after a mistake, they could recover from failures more quickly. 

"It helped them build these connections with each other," Enquist said. "If we can learn deeply about each other as humans, any one moment in the game will never be bigger (than) me in the moment. Just be ready for your moment. We have 25 moments in every game. So we really tried to do that and just build this concept around being ready for your moment." 

And throughout their Olympics run, several players have come through in their moment. 

After dropping their opening match to China, it was the powerful arm of Annie Drews — delivering a third of the team's points on her vicious attacks in the fifth set of the match — that pulled out a win over Serbia. In their quarterfinal win over Poland, it was key blocks from Poulter, Washington, Larson and Chiaka Ogbogu that helped the U.S. recover from an early 6-point deficit to close out the straight-sets win. 

Those numbers tell one side of the story. But Enquist sees a more meaningful tale between those plays. 

It was easy to spot in the Americans' intense semifinal match against Brazil. As the game entered a crucial stretch of the fifth set, with Brazil countering every heroic play the U.S. would make, the American teammates continued making direct eye contact in their huddles, maintaining high energy after mistakes, and quickly picking teammates up after losing points that became increasingly critical. 

Then came a turning point with the fifth set tied 8-8. Ogbogu took a set from Avery Skinner and delivered a sharp attack at Brazil outside hitter Gabriela Braga Guimaraes, considered by many to be the world's best player. But in this moment, Braga Guimaraes misplayed the dig, giving the U.S. a 9-8 lead. Brazil followed with errors on the next three plays — including another dig error by Braga Guimaraes — to put the U.S. ahead 12-8. 

Shoulders slumped among the Brazil players. They moved slowly between plays. Faces expressed their frustration. That 4-point run was the difference in a 15-11 set win that advanced the U.S. to the gold medal match. 

Brazil's difficulty in recovery from those failures — something Enquist said the U.S. has mastered — became a key factor in the match. 

"I'm really proud of how they're taking care of each other and how it's translating onto the court," said Enquist, who praised how the players have managed their behavior through hard situations. "We talk about each other with honor. We recognize. We celebrate. We build confidence, not by performing, but by moving through hard (situations). Lean in and move through. And it has served us well." 

It's put the U.S. in position to win its second straight gold medal — a significant moment for a team that won its first Olympic gold in Tokyo just three years ago. 

It won't be accomplished easily. Italy is the world's top-ranked team and has dropped just a single set in the entire tournament. 

But in the comfort of its team culture, Enquist sees a team that has developed a sense of satisfaction when playing with its back against the wall.  

"They believe it," Enquist said. "And belief is a powerful thing. If you can engineer your own belief, there's no limit to what you can achieve."