A Lifelong
Passion
Coach Matt's volleyball origins began in middle school, watching his older brother play at Southwest Texas State University. In between matches his brother would "pepper" with him, igniting his passion for the sport of volleyball. Years later, Matt would follow his brother's footsteps by joining the now Texas State Men's Club Volleyball team 2005-2008.
Matt dropped out of college his senior year in 2008 to take advantage of an amazing opportunity to work for an internet startup company in Silicon Valley. After moving to the bay, he was almost immediately laid off, and instead of pursuing tech he decided to join his brother who was full time coaching girls volleyball.
In 2008, Matt was the head coach of the Freshman team at Mountain View High School, and assisted his brother on Varsity. It was a crash course in high level coaching - his brother's varsity program was one of the top in the area, and that first year the matches were televised and they went on the exciting road to state. Matt was responsible for statistics, video editing, and assisting with drills.
In 2009, Matt was the head coach of the JV team at Mountain View High School, and assisted his brother on Varsity. For club he coached for City Beach 12 Black and 14 Area.
In 2010, Matt moved back to Texas to take a job as an IT Director for a small school in New Braunfels, Texas. They asked him to run the volleyball program and coach the Varsity team, in addition to teaching calculus.
In 2011, Matt was the head coach of the Centex 14 National team - a powerful team of 8th graders that would go on to qualify 14 Open at the Dallas Lonestar Classic.
In late 2011, Matt moved back out to California to take an awesome job at a startup company, and would later retire from that job to study Traditional Chinese Medicine in Santa Cruz, California. Matt was curious why so many of his family members had gotten cancer, and wanted to look at health from a completely different perspective. He dropped out after only a year, realizing that Traditional Chinese Medicine was not his path and moved back to Texas to take care of his declining father.
Fast forward to 2019, Coach Matt returned to coaching teams for Great Hearts Monte Vista - he ran their middle school volleyball teams and coached soccer up until the COVID lockdown. During COVID, Coach Matt tried to start coaching sand volleyball, but that was quickly shut down as well.
In 2022 Coach Matt joined Texas Boom for a single season to coach their 11's team. After the season ended Matt began running his own summer and fall camps, and with private lessons it became a full time job. A year later he would found Mockingbird Volleyball so he could take players to tournaments and offer a full program throughout the entire year.
His Guiding Principles
Growth Mindset
Recognizing how humans grow is extremely empowering. We realize that consistent success, or skill, is actually a cumulation of errors, or failures - that we learn from and learn to correct or compensate for. We go from a stage of not even knowing what we don't know, to an acute awareness of what we are doing wrong, to an ability to do it correctly when focused on it, to it becoming a habit that happens naturally. This is the growth process and if we honor it, we reap its rewards.
Intention
So much of what we are and what we do is an aggregation of our past - most specifically our habits define so much of our present behavior. It is through intention - the act of recognizing new aspects of particular skills or strategies - that allows us to focus on implementing new or refined behaviors.
Muscle Memory
Our brain may remember swinging for a ball, but so much of the mechanics are autonomously remembered and recalled by the muscles and nerves in the arms and body themselves. We have the ability to make small refinements and even change whole motor programs, but it takes at least a few weeks for our nervous and muscular system to rewire these new mechanics in.
Recovery
Staying hydrated, eating well, and getting plenty of sleep is critical to the work we do. As we progress, additional therapies are needed such as strength and conditioning, stretching, massage, or other forms of therapy to promote faster recovery. To optimize performance, we recommend holistically optimizing their entire life.
Coach Matt has a long term vision for every athlete he coaches. Every drill starts with direction, and personal feedback guides athletes individually through a journey of invisible waypoints unique to them. Every practice is a set of experiences and challenges that encourage each player to adapt and grow so they can thrive in any environment.
