Terry Pettit speaks from a deep heart. He has a way of inspiring performance by having readers confront and old truth in a new and enlightening manner. Wisdom, inspiration, challenge . . . that is how my life is changed each time I read his work. He is the best. - Dr. David Cook, author of Golf's Sacred Journey


Former Coach Pettit Focused on Writing

 by Kelly Lyell @ coloradoan.com

Terry Pettit never intended to become a coach. He was a writer, who had just completed his master's degree in fine arts at the University of Arkansas, looking for work as an English teacher when he landed his first job at a junior college in North Carolina.

He was hired, he said, to teach four courses, coach three sports and serve as the faculty advisor for the student literary magazine. Coaching soon became as much of a passion as poetry, though, and Pettit went on to become one of the most successful college volleyball coaches ever. He guided Nebraska to 21 conference titles in 23 years from 1977-99, seven Final Four appearances and the first of the school's four national championships.

"In our sport, he's kind of a legend," CSU volleyball coach Tom Hilbert said, noting that more than 400 coaches attended a presentation Pettit led at last weekend's Final Four in Omaha, Neb.

Pettit said he's never given up writing, jotting in journals, writing how-to articles and composing poems. But he just completed his first book, "Talent and the Secret Life of Teams." The 164-page book, published last month, offers an introspective look at the philosophies, relationships and experiences that shaped his coaching career and that he now shares with coaches, athletes and businessmen through seminars and his leadership academies.

"I always felt like I had two passions, coaching and writing," Pettit said Tuesday. "One was competitive, and the other was creative, and while you can be both in coaching, there's no question the competitiveness always wins out."

"If I can help a coach through mentoring that for me is creative. If I were trying to win myself, that would be competitive."

As a result, Pettit stepped aside from coaching following the 1999 season, still at the peak of his game and only 53 years old, to pursue his new role. He and his wife, Anne, and their youngest daughter, Emma, moved to Fort Collins several years ago.

In the book, which focuses on Nebraska's 1995 national championship season, Pettit describes the importance of having peer-mentors - friends from coaching and other walks of life that he could talk to on a regular basis who could give him a different perspective on the issues he was facing coaching his team.

Those insights, he said, were critical to his success as a coach and formed the basis for his current role running leadership academies for college coaches and athletes at CSU, Creighton and Denver. Pettit meets at least once a month in person with the coaches and athletes at each school and uses e-mail and cell phones for more frequent discussion.

"As coaches, we spend so much time on the physical part of the game, and yet none of us are trained that well in the mental aspect of the game," Creighton athletic director Bruce Rasmussen said. "I think Terry is talented in the mental aspect of the game.

"He's made a difference. Can I put a percentage on it? No. But I can tell you very definitely our involvement with Terry has made us more successful. Not necessarily always in wins and losses, but more successful in respect to the mission of the university and what you want to see displayed with all of our student-athletes and what they take from the sport that they can use for the rest of their careers."

Hilbert, coach of Colorado State University's highly successful volleyball program, said much of his coaching philosophy was shaped by Pettit, who Hilbert has known since he first started coaching in 1984 as an assistant at Oklahoma. Hilbert, in fact, coached Pettit's oldest daughter, Katherine, at CSU from 1997-2000, although his predecessor had recruited her.

"My philosophies on how to build a good team really are based a lot on what he did (at Nebraska)," Hilbert said. "I was trying to build sort of a poor man's Nebraska there. I really admire him a lot."

Eric Hoos, the men's golf coach at Denver, said Pettit has helped him communicate and relate better to the athletes on his team while, at the same time, pushing them to challenge themselves more to improve.

Tim Miles, CSU's men's basketball coach, said Pettit has given him new insights into "understanding the team dynamic and how personalities conflict and clash or mesh."
All of those areas and many more are discussed and explored in the book, with Pettit offering the insight he gained through experience while trying to apply both left- and right-brain thinking to coaching.

"The thing to me that's fascinating about him," Hilbert said, "is he puts academia into coaching. He's really a professor of coaching philosophy."