11/1/05

Published: November 01, 2005 12:57 am

Keeping it real

Pithy, positive approach serves MSU volleyball coach well

By Brian Ojanpa
The Free Press
MANKATO —

Calling him “coach?” Even that’s a bit stuffy.

And addressing him as “Mr. Amundson” would fit the guy about as well as those courtroom gloves fit O.J.

To one and all he prefers simply “Aame,” pronounced “Ommy” — the double-A spelling in play to give it a Scandinavian phonetic, he says.

Dennis Amundson, in his first season as head coach of the Minnesota State volleyball team, appears to be cast against type.

Where other coaches are youthful, long and lean, Amundson is 58, short and stocky, and looks like the wrestler he once was. Coached that sport too, and his self-assessment is bluntly candid:

“I was a terrible wrestling coach.”

So he glommed onto volleyball, coming to the sport through the back door and toiling for years on the collegiate level in second-banana roles.

The MSU position is his first college head-coaching job.

“This has never really been a thing I craved or wanted,” he says. “I was just kind of drawn to it.”

And his players were drawn to him. During Amundson’s on-campus interview visit last spring, he met team members and had them at “hello.”

“The team just fell in love with him,” senior Tiffany Graham says. “He’s just inspiring. He looks at the world in such a positive way. He gives respect, and he gets it too. He’s kind of just like our grandpa.”

Told of that comment, Amundson winces.

“Ouch,” he says, then shrugs.

“Well, I AM a grandpa.”

The St. Cloud State grad says he first became intrigued with volleyball as a grade-school physical education teacher. He boned up on the sport, but that was the extent of his involvement.

A few years later, in the late 1970s, the volleyball coach at St. Paul Harding High quit suddenly, and Amundson made his pitch. Timing is everything, and the ex-wrestler with no volleyball coaching experience got the job.

“I faked it a lot, but the kids didn’t know that,” he says. “I was able to hide it pretty well.”

He eventually guided Harding to three state tournament appearances before becoming an eight-year volunteer assistant coach at the University of Minnesota.

Last season he was assistant coach at the University of St.Thomas, and he’s been involved in club volleyball programs in the upper Midwest since 1987.

The Mavericks had a .500 record going into play last weekend, a mark that merely tantalizes, Amundson says.

“That’s just flirting with success.”

Success being defined as?

“Two things: Eclipsing what last year’s team did, and we’ve done that, and eclipsing conference wins, and we’ve done that too.”

But Amundson says one more part of his success equation has been elusive.

“We need to beat somebody who can beat somebody.”

By that he means defeating a ranked squad that already owns victories over highly-regarded “somebodies.”

Though the Mavericks failed to do that over the weekend against Minnesota-Duluth, ranked in the top 10 nationally, the squad remains on the uptick following a forgettable 2004 season.

Last year, MSU posted a 10-17 record under coach Doug Tully, who resigned. Amundson calls last year an “aberration” in the program. The players call it — in so many words — spiraling misery, and have latched onto Amundson’s low-key, positive style like non-swimmers to a lifebuoy.

“Aame makes us want to be here,” sophomore Stef Sandstrom says. “I go to practice every day and I’m excited. We only have four games left, and I wish the season could keep going.”

After years of coaching, Amundson knows when to push, when to pull back, and when to engage in pure whimsy.

On Monday, following the long weekend trip to Duluth and prior to today’s game at Winona State, the coach kept practice light by “officiating” a touch football game, with a volleyball substituting for a pigskin.

“He keeps things fun,” Graham says. “He’ll tell us, ‘Volleyball is not personal, it’s not pervasive, and it’s not permanent.’”

But that’s not to say it’s not about winning too, and Amundson says his underclassmen-dominated squad is ripe to beat a “somebody.”

“We’re on the verge,” he says. “We’re real close.”