The Art of coaching

SANDPOINT — He’s won an Olympic medal, NCAA national titles and AAU championships during more than a half century as a head coach.

He refers to former football coaches Bill Walsh and Lou Holtz as “Walshie” and “Louie,” a byproduct of working alongside the pair of coaching legends at Stanford and Notre Dame back in the day, and he’s also rubbed elbows with the likes of Bobby Knight, Digger Phelps and Dick Vermeil over the years.

He’s got plenty of coaching opinions and philosophies, borne of decades coaching water polo and volleyball, and he’s not afraid to share his knowledge with any young coach or player who will listen.

The always-entertaining, oft-opinionated Art Lambert, 79, shares his take on everything from what makes a great coach (passion), to who the best local player he ever coached was (Jessica Nyrop), to witnessing history at a pair of Olympic Games.

 “The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”

—Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne

Lambert grew up in California, a mile away from Stanford University, eventually becoming an All-American water polo player at San Jose State University. He got out of the service at the age of 25, and shortly thereafter began coaching local water polo teams, the genesis of a career that is still going strong today.

After winning six national AAU titles in water polo, Lambert was asked to coach the U.S Olympic team for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. His team finished fifth, but Lambert was lucky enough to be nearby and watch in person as Bob Beamon long jumped 29 feet, 2 inches in a majestic leap that remains a signature Olympic moment. Tommie Smith and John Carlos would later raise black-gloved fists on the medal podium, one of the lasting images of those games.

Lambert would return again for the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, stewarding the U.S. team to a bronze medal, and once again bearing witness to some history. While Mark Spitz nabbed seven gold medals in the pool, the games are remembered more for men with ski masks and guns holding 11 Israeli athletes and coaches hostage in the Olympic village, eventually murdering them and marring the Games.

“I witnessed that from around the corner. I had been packing my bags, we’d won the bronze, and I ran into George Haynes, the swim coach. He said ‘Art, look at this.’ There were two guys outside with guns,” recalls Lambert. “He explained it to me, and we sat there and watched it for a half hour. The Jews hunted down and killed everyone responsible for that.”

Also in 1972, Lambert took the water polo head coaching job at Stanford, and during his eight-year tenure won a national championship in 1976. He also coached the men’s volleyball team, and was the first coach of the Stanford women’s volleyball team for two seasons after it became an official varsity sport.

His next résumé item was a stint as the Notre Dame women’s volleyball coach from 1984 to 1990, building the Irish program into a top-20 power.

Shortly thereafter he was head coach at Sandpoint High School for two years. He also coached the North Idaho Volleyball Club for more than a decade, shaping players from Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Sandpoint and the Silver Valley and helping put a host of athletes into colleges.

He still puts on volleyball camps with wife Mary Jo Lambert, herself a former college volleyball coach, and works with setters on an individual basis.

When asked his take on club sports in this day and age, and a growing trend toward specializing in one sport, he called it a two-edged coin.

“On the plus side, people get scholarships on the basis of club performance. We’ve got a pretty good track record of putting setters in some pretty highfalutin’ institutions,” claims Lambert. “The downside is burnout. Same (stuff) day in, day out. Mentally, they need a break, something different.”

“When you are passionate, you always have your destination in sight and you are not distracted by obstacles.”

—Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski

Mary Jo once tallied up Art’s career winning percentage at all of the places he has coached, and came up with a robust .803, not quite Mark Few-esque, but damn close.

As part of the .800 club, Lambert can get away with using an apropos fishing metaphor.

“Twenty percent of the fisherman catch 80 percent of the fish,” tells Lambert. “Twenty percent of the coaches do 80 percent of the winning.”

But therein lies the rub. Every coach would love to win 80 percent of the time, but select few ever have or will.

So what’s the secret?

“The passion of the coach is huge,” concedes Lambert. “How that translates, it’s endemic to everything you’re talking about.”

Lambert uses a few football coaches to illustrate his point when it comes to passion, citing Sandpoint High’s Satini Puailoa and a pair of NFL coaches.

“Puailoa is a classic example of a guy that’s passionate and respects his players. I can tell you that team is everything,” says Lambert, who named the Patriots’ Bill Belichick as his favorite coach today. “I also love Chip Kelly; he’s shaking them all up.”

As for the 20 percent coaching set, sometimes it can be attributed to lack of talent, and sometimes there are other reasons. Lambert doesn’t mince words when assessing some of the coaching he sees taking place today.

“I’m appalled at what I see. A hell of a lot of kids are getting cheated,” laments Lambert, citing a prime reason. “A lack of commitment and passion on the part of the coach. If you’re going to ask your players to commit, you’ve got to commit too.”

Competing in an arena where wins and losses are printed on a daily basis will thicken any person’s skin, and Lambert has done so at the highest levels. While at Stanford he bumped into Bill Walsh, mastermind architect of football’s west coast offense, on a regular basis. Walsh died in 2007.

Who knows how much knowledge he soaked up by osmosis, but how could you not learn from hanging around one of the true coaching legends?

“I knew Bill well. He’d get tired of all the media crap, and come into my office for a cup of coffee,” recalls Lambert, sharing a story. “Bill said, ‘why don’t you come to practice?’ I said ‘what are you going to talk about?’ He said ‘I’m going to talk about coaching.’ I said ‘X’s and O’s?’ He said ‘no, coaching. The essence of coaching is on the other side.”

To this day, Lambert differentiates between a practice conductor and a teacher. The great coaches are usually the great teachers, and there is nothing like the rush of seeing your handiwork come together in victories.

“The orchestration of putting people together and making them function as one,” says Lambert. “It’s really fascinating to do it; it’s a challenge.”

“If I came in to recruit your son, I would tell you, your wife, and your son, that I will be the most demanding coach your son can play for.”

—Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight

Hang around Lambert long enough and two things become evident: He knows his stuff, and he’s very strong in his convictions.

Former Sandpoint High athletic director Jack Dyck is no stranger to volleyball. He’s produced some of the best club teams in the northwest, and spent last season as an assistant coach at the University of Arizona, where his daughter Amy once played. Dyck, whose son Matt is now an assistant volleyball coach at Eastern Washington University, has gotten to know Lambert well through the years, and says his coaching style is clear-cut.

“Art’s very much an old-school coach. He understands the game, and is a good teacher,” describes Dyck. “There’s one way to do it, and Art’s way is how it’s going to be done.”

Lambert was asked who’s the best player he’s ever coached in Idaho, and didn’t hesitate in answering Jessica Nyrop, an athletic 5-11 setter who graduated from Lake City in 2004 before going on to star at the University of San Diego.

“She was 5-11, jumped well, had great hands and had the guts of a burglar,” says Lambert, who coached her for four years of club ball in high school. “She got a full ride to the University of San Diego, and made the second 12 Olympiad.”

While at USD Nyrop met Andrew Roland, who played football for Jim Harbaugh before the enigmatic coach left for Stanford, San Francisco and now Michigan.

The couple were visiting Lambert recently when the conversation turned to football.

“I said ‘Tell me about Harbaugh.’ He said ‘Off the field I didn’t care for him, but he’s a hell of a coach,’” recalls Lambert. “I said ‘when you’re a coach, you shouldn’t be running for mayor.’”

Current Sandpoint volleyball coach Erin (McGovern) Roos played her junior and senior seasons for Lambert, before landing a full-ride scholarship to the University of Michigan in the early 90s. She calls him knowledgeable, honest and funny, but admits he had an ornery streak as well.

“You knew where you stood, he didn’t play head games. If you weren’t starting, you knew why,” remembers Roos. “He was controversial. He said it like it was and that irritated people.”

After her junior season, an angry group of parents wanted the demanding Lambert ousted, but the team was having none of it. The players were tired of the coaching carousel and didn’t mind the fire that Lambert brought to the court, each signing a letter stating they wanted him back.

“Some of the parents were upset with my intensity,” admits Lambert. “All of the parents shut up after that (letter).”

That old-school style is in short supply in this day and age, where players are far more coddled and more than a few coaches have been ousted by angry parents.

Roos is part of the current breed of coaches, but she admits Lambert’s style is alive and well in many of the things she does.

“He had high expectations,” she says. “And he was fun to play for.”