Completed Event: Men's Volleyball versus #6 BYU on March 21, 2025 , Loss , 1, to, 3
M Volleyball
vs #6 BYU
L 1-3
Grand Canyon University Athletics
Insider: Werle coaches for country
8/27/2019 9:49:00 AM | Men's Volleyball, Lopes Insider Blog
GCU head coach led Team USA to silver medal
The patriotic pull of what Matt Werle did last week was apparent from the time he returned to the same Colorado facility where he trained as a junior national team player 12 years ago to when he donned red, white and blue as the head coach of Team USA in preparation for international competition.
But it tugged the heartstrings when the GCU men's volleyball head coach toed the line with his team before its first match Thursday and the U.S. national anthem delivered his "biggest chill."
"That's the moment when I went, 'Wow, this is very special,' " Werle said. "Most of the players had never worn the USA uniform before that. I know when I was 18, 19, it was tough to wrap my head around the importance of representing your country even if it is just a sport. It was nice to grasp the magnitude of it."
Werle led the U.S. team to a three-set sweep that night and an eventual silver medal in the NORCECA Champions Cup, a tournament featuring the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and gold-medal winner Cuba at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center.
"It was an unbelievable experience and definitely something I'll never forget," Werle said.
USA Volleyball approached Werle previously about head coaching opportunities for an under-21 team's trip to Peru and a training camp but the short notice and conflicts with GCU's recruiting schedule kept him from accepting those. This opportunity worked for timing (before the start of the GCU school year), team type (recent college graduates and current college players) and staff (his assistant, Spencer McLachlin, was his junior national team roommate in 2007).
McLachlin is the UCLA assistant to John Sperew, the national coach, and that helped translate Werle's vision into consistent terminology in the national program.
The team practiced for three to four hours daily in the week leading up to the matches. His players ranged in age from 21 to 27. For the younger players, Werle was able to deliver in-tournament lessons about the need to maintain an intensity level from night to night when Cuba's top team overwhelmed the Americans with powerful serves in a four-set loss on the second day.
He reminded them how they will need to internally motivate themselves from night to night when each is the only English-speaking player on a European pro team.
"The one thing we preached is that this had to be some sort of collaborative effort," Werle said. "The fact that we all came from different institutions and had different styles, we tried to use that to our advantage and find what worked."
Follow Paul Coro on Twitter: @paulcoro.
But it tugged the heartstrings when the GCU men's volleyball head coach toed the line with his team before its first match Thursday and the U.S. national anthem delivered his "biggest chill."
"That's the moment when I went, 'Wow, this is very special,' " Werle said. "Most of the players had never worn the USA uniform before that. I know when I was 18, 19, it was tough to wrap my head around the importance of representing your country even if it is just a sport. It was nice to grasp the magnitude of it."
Werle led the U.S. team to a three-set sweep that night and an eventual silver medal in the NORCECA Champions Cup, a tournament featuring the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and gold-medal winner Cuba at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center.
"It was an unbelievable experience and definitely something I'll never forget," Werle said.
USA Volleyball approached Werle previously about head coaching opportunities for an under-21 team's trip to Peru and a training camp but the short notice and conflicts with GCU's recruiting schedule kept him from accepting those. This opportunity worked for timing (before the start of the GCU school year), team type (recent college graduates and current college players) and staff (his assistant, Spencer McLachlin, was his junior national team roommate in 2007).
McLachlin is the UCLA assistant to John Sperew, the national coach, and that helped translate Werle's vision into consistent terminology in the national program.
The team practiced for three to four hours daily in the week leading up to the matches. His players ranged in age from 21 to 27. For the younger players, Werle was able to deliver in-tournament lessons about the need to maintain an intensity level from night to night when Cuba's top team overwhelmed the Americans with powerful serves in a four-set loss on the second day.
He reminded them how they will need to internally motivate themselves from night to night when each is the only English-speaking player on a European pro team.
"The one thing we preached is that this had to be some sort of collaborative effort," Werle said. "The fact that we all came from different institutions and had different styles, we tried to use that to our advantage and find what worked."
Follow Paul Coro on Twitter: @paulcoro.
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