Club Consultants
Ron Larsen
Club Consultant- Core Volleyball Club
USA Men’s National Volleyball Team
Third Year
Ron Larsen begins his third season as assistant coach for the USA Men’s National Volleyball Team on the heels of a very successful first year. Team USA finished the 2005 season by going 27-6 and winning five medals in five tournaments.
The team earned a silver medal at the USOC International Sports Invitational in San Diego, Calif., gold medals at the America’s Cup in Brazil, the FIVB World Championship Qualifying Tournament in Puerto Rico and the NORCECA Continental Championship in Canada and another silver medal at the FIVB World Grand Champions Cup in Japan.
The Americans finished the year ranked fifth in the world.
Larsen, formerly the head coach of the UC San Diego men’s volleyball team, was hired as an assistant coach for the USA Men on April 13, 2005. He serves as the top assistant coach to Team USA head coach Hugh McCutcheon, who was hired on Feb. 3, 2005, to replace long-time head coach Doug Beal, USA Volleyball’s new chief executive officer.
Larsen, the 2004 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) Coach of the Year, completed six seasons as the UCSD head coach. Larsen came to UCSD in 2000—in the school’s final year of NCAA Division III affiliation—and led the Tritons to one of the most memorable seasons in the program’s history. UCSD won the Molten Division III Men’s Volleyball Invitational Championship that season and recorded the most wins (nine) for a Triton team in 10 seasons.
That year he also led the team to its first MPSF victory in three seasons. Competing as the only Division II team and the only non-scholarship program in the nation’s toughest men’s volleyball conference, the Tritons have continued to make strides in meeting the formidable challenge.
Larsen came to UCSD from the University of Rutgers-Newark. A veteran of seven seasons at the New Jersey university, Larsen has coaching roots in the University of California (UC) system.
His coaching career began at the University of California-Berkeley, where he led the Bears’ men’s volleyball team to a record of 102-29 at the club level. He coached at Cal from 1980-84 and again from 1987-89.
He also served as an assistant coach of the women’s volleyball team at St. Mary’s College from 1987-88 before moving on to the University of California, Davis in 1989. At Davis, he served as assistant coach of the women’s team for four seasons and as head coach of the men’s team from 1991-93, leading the Aggies to a 65-31 record and a fifth-place finish at the 1993 national club volleyball tournament.
Larsen served as head men’s and women’s coach at Rutgers-Newark from 1993-99, compiling a record of 97-80 in men’s volleyball and 111-79 with the women’s team. The men’s team was consistently ranked in the nation’s top 15. Larsen was named New Jersey Athletic Conference Coach of the Year in 1996 and 1998 and Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA) Coach of the Year in 1998.
Larsen’s coaching experience also includes the 1995 USA Olympic Festival, where he served as head coach of the North Men’s Team and led his squad to a silver medal. He also coached the 1996 USA Boys Youth National Team, featuring the nation’s top 18 high school players.
“I’ve been at a lot of different levels, from juniors all the way up,” said Larsen. “I think what I bring is an ability to teach at all levels. I bring an ability to recognize that even the best players sometimes make the same errors that younger people do. I think I have a wonderful eye for that and I think I’m very good at training people. I am going to bring that to the table right off. I am very committed and I’m going to bring a big work ethic, which I think everyone at that level has. More than anything else I am going to bring experience. Of course, I also know there is also a lot to learn at that next level.”