Fort Lewis College announced on Monday that it hired Justin Wong as the Skyhawks’ next volleyball coach. Wong replaces Giedre Tarnauskaite, who led the program for five years and finished 43-69 overall for a 38.3 winning percentage; FLC went 30-47 in RMAC play during that span.
“I've had little stints here and there where I've always wondered what it would be like to be a head coach,” Wong said. “So when this opportunity came up like I told the team and a lot of my coaching buddies, they know that I've always wanted to live in Colorado. So when this came up, I thought, ‘I need to give this some serious thought.’ So super excited to be here. I was able to fly out to Durango for a little bit and get the ball rolling with the employee stuff.”
Wong most recently was an assistant coach at Division I George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for three seasons. Before that, he spent four seasons as an assistant at Division I Texas A&M Corpus Christi and was an assistant at Division I Georgetown. He started his collegiate coaching career at Miami University in Ohio.
A former men’s club volleyball player at Ohio State, Wong didn’t go to college to become a volleyball coach. He went to school to become an engineer but always knew he loved volleyball. Wong got involved with some high school teams and helped coach high school volleyball in college.
Once he graduated, Wong worked as a lab tech at Ohio State Hospital. But during that job, all he thought about was volleyball and he wanted to make it a career. He found a master’s program in Sport Behavior & Performance at Miami University in Ohio and started coaching college volleyball.
A big thing Wong learned from all his stops is being adjustable and flexible to work with all kinds of situations. According to Wong, each school is a challenge with trying to know what the strengths of the location and the program are as well as knowing what types of kids will be attracted to the program and location.
He loves getting in the gym and seeing players have that aha moment on the court. Wherever he’s been, volleyball has been the thing that brings everyone together.
Wong enjoyed the assistant coach role in his previous stops. He knew that he could deliver messages to the team that would be perceived differently than the head coach’s message in a positive way.
Colorado became an ideal place to live for Wong when he was coaching at Georgetown. He did a camp at the University of Colorado Boulder and was struck by the beauty of a random lake on the side of the road. He took a picture of the scenery and returned to Colorado as Georgetown competed in a preseason tournament hosted by Denver University and Air Force. He saw the area, met the people and had it cemented in the back of his mind that he wanted to move to Colorado.
Once Wong saw the job opening at FLC, it stuck out with its location in Colorado and laid-back lifestyle. The Division II landscape was also attractive to him after talking to some coaching buddies who had positive things to say about their Division II experiences.
He visited Durango and FLC and saw how the town and campus mixed. Wong met with staff on FLC’s campus, met with the team and felt rewarded by the experience. He knew it was the right time to make the move to being a head coach.
“A few of them have already told me that were waiting for this day for a while,” Wong said about the previous head coaches he worked for. “I met with my old boss at Georgetown before I left and she told me that she thought I was ready when I left Georgetown. I, of course, did not feel that at all. She told me that I had the volleyball knowledge, was good at building relationships, was patient and I had the volleyball stuff down.”
While Wong was on campus, he saw a few short practices. He’s still sorting through paperwork but told the team he was excited to get started and he plans on being back in Durango at the end of March. Wong told the team to be ready to work, make some changes and be flexible.
Wong’s very big on ball control and first contact off serves. He said that’s what he loves to teach the most.
He’s looking for future players that fit the FLC lifestyle. Wong remembered recruiting kids to Corpus Christi who loved the beach and kids to George Washington who loved the city lifestyle.
“It's about the relationship with your teammates and also the coaching staff,” Wong said. “When you have players that are really invested in each other and know each other really well, it's a lot easier to push yourself to the next level and push each other to the next level. That part has basically been the same wherever; we can do the volleyball stuff well, but to get the next level, you need that relationship piece. So the volleyball analyzing part will come once I see more of the team and its current roster, but for sure the relationship part can take a team very far.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
