“It’s exciting, thrilling, and rewarding at the end of the day.”
Luka Slabe, the head coach of women’s volleyball at North Carolina State University and Olympic trainer, sits down with us in this episode of the 35,000 feet podcast going over the past season for his team, his experience working in the Olympics, his life living and traveling all around the world, some memorable travel experiences, and his advice to future athletes.
In this episode, we discuss:
How this past season went for North Carolina State Women’s Volleyball team (0:22)
How Coach Slabe got into coaching (2:38)
Luka’s favorite travel experience (5:10)
Luka’s advice to athletes wanting to play in college (15:03)
Luka’s next adventure (19:16)
The Whirlwind of a Past Season for Coach Luka Slabe and His Team
Courtney: Hi guys, welcome back, it's Courtney. Today I'm sitting down with Coach Luka. He is the head coach for women's volleyball at North Carolina State University, and we're super excited to sit down and chat with him and get to know him a little bit better. So thanks for joining us, Luka.
Luka: Thank you for having me.
Courtney: How about you go ahead and tell us about the highs and lows of your current season.
Luka: As you all know, a lot is going on right now and in January, actually early February, I was hired as a new head coach of our NC State volleyball program, while I'm still working for USA Volleyball, currently I'm assistant coach of the women's Olympic team. So the Olympics were postponed. Instead of traveling to Japan, in July to Tokyo, we're going to sit tied back home and train and work, and hopefully we get to the train and work at all, on either fronts, either with NC State or with USA Volleyball.
And we're going to go to Tokyo, I guess next year. There's a lot of highs and lows. So we evaluate our previous summer with USA Volleyball transitioning into 2020 while I was hired for NC State. And now all of this coronavirus and Olympics being gone, and a lot of adaptation needed because everything has moved online with our student-athletes at NC State. And same with USA Volleyball athletes. Everything is based on what we're doing right now, using different social channels and platforms to communicate, unfortunately. But it's a good grind, it's a good adversity, and it's a good challenge and we love challenges.
Courtney: That's so awesome. And how was the season going before all of this stuff started happening for you guys?
Luka: We always plan a lot. We're trying to have different versions of plan in place. I can talk especially about USA Volleyball. I think we're a very organized group. And once I got hired for... with NC State, same thing, a lot of planning, I had a chance to spend a couple of weeks in Raleigh, North Carolina, to actually train with my team before they tell us, "You're out, you have to leave the campus student-athletes must go home." And until then I thought everything goes kind of according to the plan, even though things never go according to the plan. That's when how well are we at adapting, adjusting comes to place. And I think, like everybody else in our business, we've been pretty successful with that.
Luka’s Start in Coaching and Involvement in the Olympics
Courtney: So you obviously have a pretty good career in volleyball going on. How did you get your title to be head coach at NC State, but also to be assistant coach in the Olympics team?
Luka: I started playing volleyball in elementary school, throughout high school clubs, playing for different clubs, and then I got recruited to go play for Brigham Young University in Utah. I played there, I graduated from BYU, and I was blessed and very happy to be surrounded with amazing coaches. Coaches that multiple golden Olympic metals as coaches. And that was my staff, Carl McGown, Hugh McCutcheon, Troy Tanner. And that kind of led me into thinking back in the days, "You know what, I want to be coach someday, but before that, I want to play professional volleyball for a few years." And that's exactly what I did.
I went back to Europe after graduation, played volleyball professionally, and then when it was time for me to kind of be done playing because my body was just hurting and I was not just kind of, I was over it a little bit. I decided to got into coaching. And while I was in Europe and I was fortunate enough to get a head coaching job right away with one of the professional teams back home. And that led into another good job and being head coach of Slovenia men's national team. And then eventually I received a phone call for Brigham Young University, if I would come back and coach their men's team. I did that and while I was working for BYU, Karch arrived from the USA women's national team reached out. If I would love to join, if I would like to join USA team and pursue off gold medal in Tokyo, of course I jumped on board right away. And while working for Karch, I received phone call from NC State, and here I am, new head coach of NC State women's volleyball program.
Courtney: That's so awesome. That's such a cool career to be able to play for yourself and then play professionally, and then now be able to coach, and not only just coach at university, but coach for the Olympic team. That's really awesome.
Luka: It doesn't get better. I think so.
Courtney: And where are you from? You said back home in Europe.
Luka: Yeah. I am from Slovenia, born and raised in Slovenia. And like I said, I went to US my degree returned back to Europe for another 12 years, and family and I went back to US in 2015, straight to Provo, Utah.
Luka Slabe’s Most Enjoyable and Memorable Travel Experiences
Courtney: Like I said, we're a travel company, so we kind of want to chat a little bit about some of your travel experiences. And it sounds like you have a lot of miles behind you. So what would you say your most memorable travel experience has been?
Luka: I have to say probably I've been around the world more than a few times looking at my miles account, it's ridiculous, but that's part of our job. And every time I go to the airport, I'm still like a little kid wondering how can we even take these planes up there? 30,000 feet up there, 5,000 feet up there, just cruise around the world. I still have those butterflies. Every time I traveled, I went a lot. So I'm not used to it yet. I get a lot, but like I said, within six or seven weeks during the summer with USA, we go to four, five, maybe different continents. So basically every week we're in a different continent, maybe starting in US, we traveled to China or Japan, we go to Europe, we go to Brazil or Argentina. And then back to States.
That's a very common schedule that we have. So if I have to talk about what was one of the craziest or lately, the gnarliest trips, it has to be last summer or summer of 2008 team. We were in China and we need to go to Argentina because we just play three matches in China, China in the middle of nowhere, it's a big city, but for us, it's in the middle of nowhere and now we need to get to Argentina, Buenos Aires. And so we fly to Turkey Istanbul first. It's about 12-hour flight, everything goes smoothly. We have three-hour layover. We just get into the lounges and girls do all the rehabs and treatments, and they eat well and they try to get some rest. And then we have a 15 or 16-hour flight to South Paolo, Brazil just to refill. So we fly over Arabic Peninsula over Africa, and then to South Paolo Brazilian, we landed for an hour.
We refilled our plane and we're off to Sao... to Buenos Sueldos Argentina. So after 42 hours flying, being up in the air, now we need to get on the bus and drive another six hours to Santa Fe Argentina. And the craziest part is we arrived to Buenos Sueldos, and there a bus driver waiting for us to take us to our final destination. And he needs, to, according to Argentina and law, I guess, checked in every bag and tag every bag and put every bag on the bus and he's on his own. And we have probably, I don't know, there's a party of 22, 23. So athletes plus support staff and each of us probably can carry two bags. So do the math, roughly 50 bags that this poor guy has to check in on his own, and load up and then drive us another six hours in the middle of the night.
So our trip ended up being somewhere, probably around 50 hours. And meanwhile, we're driving in the middle of nowhere across the Argentina. There is a toilet back of the bus and anything you do there comes back to you. So we don't go back there very often. We got to stop in the middle of nowhere in the dark to relieve ourselves. So it's just an early trip that takes the student hotel that brings us to the hotel, like at 5:00, 6:00 AM in the morning after 50 hours, then we're just exhausted. But for sure, one of the most memorable trips with our crew, because we started in China and finished in Argentina. And that the crazy part of the travel. How fast and quick we can get around the globe.
Courtney: That's amazing. Even though it felt like a long trip, it's still amazing to think about how quickly really we can go from somewhere completely across the world to somewhere else. That's amazing that we have that ability to do that.
Luka: And to understand the life of the... I would say elite athlete is that you travel for, let's say 48, 49, 50 hours like that in a three-day time, you've got to play match back to back, to back three matches. Again, you are not even adjusted to the time change, zone change. You're beat up and you've been traveling for five weeks already and these girls still need to go compete. And then from Argentina, we go, who knows where? So life is adventurous as much as it's really tiring. So this, these guys and girls are doing some crazy stuff.
Courtney: It makes it even all the more impressive, the games that they end up playing after all that travel, even when they're so exhausted,
Luka: Very true. They're true professionals. Everything comes to play, how they rest, how they eat, how they train, how they meditate, how they take care of their bodies, their machines, their bodies are their machines. So they got to take care of them. 24, seven. There's no day off. Even when they have day off, they got to be active and they don't have many days off.
Courtney: That's really cool to think about all of those athletes. I think we all, we just watched the games and we don't really think about all of the travel and all the other things that go into it. We just watched these athletes compete and that's impressive on its own. But with all that background to hear you talk about it, that's impressive for those athletes.
Luka: We see only the nice part on T.V. we don't see the rest, which is not so nice, but it's exciting, thrilling and rewarding at the end of the day.
Courtney: And I also find that you guys get to travel around the world like that, get experience for all of those, athletes and for the coaching staff.
Luka: Within five weeks, you, like I said, you go rest and then China and maybe Thailand in Japan and then to jump on the plane, go Brazil. And then you ended up in Germany or Turkey two weeks later and you get to experience a little bit of cuisine and cuisine and people, and not a ton though, because it's all airport, hotel venues and back to hotel rest. Every now and then we have an afternoon off where we can go and discover cultures and unknown.
Luka Slabe’s Favorite Travel Destination
Courtney: You said that your most memorable experience was when you went from China to Argentina, but what, where would you say your favorite place you've traveled has been?
Luka: There is many, many places. I like to travel a lot, my family and I, every time we have a chance we love to travel. We want... We love to go somewhere. I would say probably my favorite or our favorite three years as a family was actually being in Utah. Utah has so much to offer just basically locally mountains. We like to ski. And then you go down South, you have Zion, Bryce and all these amazing national parks. And we liked that a lot. So USA has to offer a lot. So I really like what this States, especially here on the West coast, West side of the country have to offer.
So I don't need to go far to be really happy where I'm at. I don't think I have a favorite place, but if, I have to, if I would have to rank outside of US, I would say probably Istanbul Turkey, is number one. I like that area a lot. For a lot of people and maybe Serbia as a country with a capital city of Belgrade have a lot to offer. Really good cuisine, nice people, lots to see. Where I'm coming from, Slovenia, Ljubljana capital is one of those jewels. Right now they've been rated top 10 a few years in a row, places to go see.
Courtney: That's awesome.
Luka: We have a lot of American tourists there and people coming from all over the world. But if I go out of that, let's say Istanbul, probably number one. I like Belgrade Serbia a lot. And am fond of Japan in general, anything that has to do with Japan, with the culture, people, food, how they're organized, how clean everything is. I'm a big fan of that. So every time we go to Japan, I know we're in good hands.
Courtney: That's really great. I love that you highlighted the places that you've lived, like you, weren't just counting out some of the... Where you grew up and also Utah, I feel like sometimes we forget about the beauty that's around us all the time. I'm from Utah and there is a lot to see here and there's a lot to take in and do around here and also where you grew up. That's so cool that you are willing to take a look and realize that you were in beautiful places all the time.
Luka: I think when you travel a lot, that's how I see myself, when you travel a lot, you recognize, you realize that sometimes just around the corner or just the street down the street, or maybe an hour away from your house, you actually have a lot of nice and good things and places to go. And that's how I feel about Utah. That's how I feel about back home in Slovenia as well. It's a small country, but you've Alps. You can ski an hour later, you can go and jump into the Adriatic Sea, or you can go to one of many lakes. So within an hour, we can do whatever you want to do.
Courtney: Yeah, well that's a...
Luka: That's very, very unique. Very unique.
Courtney: That sounds so awesome. I love that. Similar to Utah, except we don't have an ocean near. that's-
Luka: But a lot of lakes and you can ski. Amazing outdoors, people are nice. You have a lot of mountains and desert is just you have so much in Utah. I really like Utah.
Courtney: Definitely a beautiful world that we live in. It's fun to get to experience it and see.
Luka: Exactly.
Coach Luka Slabe’s Advice to Future Collegiate Athletes
Courtney: If you were an athlete wanting to play for a team at university or even in the Olympics because you have experience there. What would your advice to that athlete be?
Luka: You have to commit to what you really want the most. And if you want to go and play for university team, you need to understand that academics are extremely important for you to actually even get on the team to be academically strong enough to get yourself on campus. And of course you got to be good at the sport that you're really good at, either volleyball, basketball, football, whatever that is. Those are two prerequisites for you to be able to do that. Even later on, after you're done with college, you just got to commit and that's a lifestyle. It cannot be, that's one of things on my list. There's probably three things on your list. And one of them is academics, one of them is sports. And then maybe social life is number three, but how that social life interferes with number one and two, it's really important.
You cannot expect to have same social life and experiences their social life like anybody else, like just maybe a regular student population on the campus. And you got to prioritize and have really good routines and really good at time management to be able to do that. Otherwise, you're going to have an average experience. You might even fail, which is okay and you learn from that, but to be successful, a lot of things must be put in place. And one of them is you need to decide what you really want. And if you don't have an answer it's going to be a tough one for you.
Courtney: That's great advice. I really like that, that you need to understand what comes in to being an athlete at university and there's a lot of dedication that needs to come with that.
Luka: When we talk to recruits right now, that's what we tell them. "This is what we can promise. We're going to work you hard, you'll have to be learner. We'll be learners with you. We're going to teach you a bunch. You'll have to change. That's all I can promise. I cannot promise you will ever start. I cannot promise you will ever dress up, but I can promise you, we're going to work your hard. We're going to develop you as a student athlete. And if that doesn't sound something you want to do, then you got to go somewhere else."
And we're pretty, pretty straight between the eyes about that, even though I'm talking to somebody that might change my program around or our program around, but I don't want to spend 75 or 80% of my energy with somebody that's not willing to adapt and be good for the team. Usually, we'll pass on that one. And also they need to understand that. We're going to do whatever we can to foster your strengths, to be able to express yourself, to do things maybe a little bit differently, if you're really good at those things. But there's times where you'll need to change and learn and adapt.
Courtney: A lot of times, the best athletes are the ones that realize that their coaches are there not to pick on them when they point out things that they need to do better, but to understand that, that's them seeing the potential in that athlete and that's them knowing that they can help make them a better athlete.
Luka: I completely agree. And unfortunately, too many coaches are getting in trouble because they're too tough on kids. Of course, there's ways to be tough from kids, but often what coaches want to do and want to achieve, it's misinterpreted and we get in trouble. So we got to be extra cautious how we go about things, how we're trying to achieve and make some changes with our student-athletes.
Courtney: Thank you. That's such great advice for all of the athletes that might be listening to this podcast and hopefully they are able to take that into high end and know better how to prepare to play for university or maybe the Olympics.
Luka: You are absolutely right. We're trying to help. We're trying to advise more than anything else and just guide our kids to their end goal. And I think that's our job.
Coach Luka Slabe’s Upcoming Adventures
Courtney: That's awesome, I love that. My last question for you is just, I know you had the Olympics that was supposed to be coming up this summer. It's been postponed, but in the meantime, do you have any other upcoming adventures that you are excited about?
Luka: The biggest adventure right now is how to survive this quarantine, how to handle the whole thing. But as you know, I'm double dipping here working for USA at NC State. And it's a non-stop. It's Monday through Sunday and then Monday starts again. So that's an adventure trying to problem-solve daily, knowing that probably within 24 hours the problem was probably solved, it's not solvable anymore, or that the plan that you've put in place, it's no good.
So it's a continuous work here in progress. And I think we're learning a lot from this situation. So it looks like there's, there's not going to be a ton of opportunities for us to compete with USA this summer knowing the Olympics are being postponed until next year. Now we have to make sure once we can to prepare our national team players to be strong and healthy when they go back and play professionally to Europe or Asia or Brazil.
With NC State is just, how can we stay somehow in shape and in good academic shape and physical shape when, once we come back, we can safely, emphasis on safely, go and play some volleyball. If we're going to be allowed to do that, not knowing what this coronavirus and the restrictions bring for fall sports. We know the spring sports were all canceled. All the competitions were canceled just recently. And now we're hoping that's not the case for fall sports, because we really want our athletes to have opportunity to have this amazing experience being student athletes. Go back to normal. This is not normal right now. So just back to normal that's plan number one.
Courtney: We are excited to watch your team at NC State play and hopefully be able to compete in a normal season. And we're excited to also watch when the USA team gets to go and finally compete in the Olympics when that gets to happen, when it's not postponed anymore. We're excited to watch the success of those two teams that you're a part of.
Luka: We are excited as well, a lot of work ahead of us, but we're going to be just fine. I do not fear that as long as we're going to stay course and believe in what we're doing and trying to figure out what's the right thing to do right now, and the right way to keep us sane and strong and mentally ready for the next adventures.
Courtney: Thank you so much for letting us get a glimpse into your life as a coach and into the life of your teams. It was super great talking to you. Thank you so much for joining us on our podcast 35,000 Feet.
Luka: Thank you for inviting me, and all the best.
North Carolina State Volleyball:
Podcast made in partnership with Acanela Expeditions
Theme Song - I’ll Just Be Me by Gravity Castle