How Tom Gardner Changed the Culture of Caltech Women’s Volleyball
by Andrew Moseman
When Tom Gardner came to coach women’s volleyball at Caltech in 2014, he wondered whether his academically driven players might ask him about the mathematics of the game: the proper geometry of passing, for instance, or the optimal angle of attack for spiking the ball over the net. Although his practice sessions didn’t turn out to be quite so data driven, he has known from the start he is coaching players who think like scientists and engineers.
“With other groups, I could just roll the ball out and say, ‘We're doing this drill, let's get started,’” he says. “My current team will want to know: What are we working on here? What is the purpose of this? Not to question my knowledge—they just like to understand what we're accomplishing. So, I've changed my approach to one where I take a little more time to tell them what we're hoping to accomplish.”
That inquisitive mindset has translated into on-court success. In 2017, Caltech won its first-ever Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) game. Two years later, Caltech posted a 10-win season that included four victories in the conference. This earned Gardner and colleagues the 2019 SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year Award.
“Tom Gardner is an amazing student-focused educator,” says Betsy Mitchell, Caltech director of athletics, physical education and recreation. “He is passionate and patient and brings just the right blend to our amazing scholar-athletes. We are so fortunate that he has dug in at Caltech and created such positive and steady momentum in our volleyball program.”
Megan Wang. Photo: Caltech Athletics
“Coach Gardner is extremely supportive and cares so much about our team,” says recent team member Megan Wang (BS ’22). “His effort to form connections with each player was essential to our strong team culture and successful seasons. If I ever wanted to discuss challenges in school or volleyball, I knew that his door was always open.”
It was a turnaround years in the making. Typically, Gardner says, the most successful volleyball players have logged countless hours of gameplay and practice repetitions in high school and in club volleyball leagues. That experience is crucial to success at the college level. When he took over as coach for the 2014 season, however, the Beavers had just one player who had played four years of high school volleyball.
Gardner knew that a reversal of the team’s fortunes would require him to find experienced high school volleyball players who were, first and foremost, prepared for the academic rigor of life at Caltech. To meet this challenge, he has become as much an academic adviser and counselor as a college coach and recruiter. When high school first-years and sophomores contact him about the possibility of playing for Caltech one day, he offers advice on the courses and extracurricular activities outside of athletics that they will need to be competitive for admission. Not all of his best prospects wind up at Caltech, but his patience has produced a roster that is now deep with experienced players—and leaders.
“We were very much underdogs,” Gardner says. “But it was just a matter of changing the mindset from walking into gyms expecting to lose and hoping that it wouldn’t be so bad to walking in with an expectation that we were going to compete.”
This attitude was a crucial part of holding the group together when the entire 2020 volleyball season was lost because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the era of social distancing, the coaches organized workouts over Zoom and soon turned over those sessions to different students, each of whom would lead the group. Gardner says several new players who would have been first-year students in 2020 moved to Pasadena—even though classroom instruction had become remote and the volleyball season was canceled—to begin integrating into the team. Caltech’s captains organized online game nights and other social activities to unite the team during the pandemic.
Coach Gardner and Dallas Taylor. Photo: Caltech Athletics
When matches resumed, those efforts paid off. “We really hit the ground running, which led to our best season yet,” Gardner says. In 2021, Caltech won 11 games overall and six in SCIAC. Four seniors from that team then graduated, but Gardner says a new group is ready to step up in the fall of 2022, including rising senior and team captain Dallas Taylor.
“It’s been amazing playing for coach Gardner,” she says. “He cares so much about all the players beyond just the sport of volleyball. He understands how important our careers are and is always supportive when it comes to conflicting schedules or mental health. Coach Gardner was one of the major reasons why I even decided to go to Caltech due to the passion he has for the sport and school.”
As for Gardner, he says he has found a home in Pasadena. “There's a pride in wearing Caltech on my chest,” he says. “It feels good to say that we're one of the top schools in the world, and I take pride in whatever role I can play in the lives of these student-athletes.”