By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Alex Kiritsy
Editor-in-Chief and Sports Reporter
In volleyball coach Todd Elwell’s office, tucked away next to the weight room, more than a dozen pictures fill the walls, complemented by various trophies and even more stacks of neatly organized papers and packets.
The office gives off a certain aura of organization, meshed with passion, mixed with dedication, blended together to make a palpable feeling of decades of hard work paying off in a sort of calming success.
The pictures in his office, most of them pinned to a corkboard that stares you in the face no matter where you are in the room, showcase his 17 years as a Newton South Wellness teacher and volleyball coach. Not one of them shows just a shot of him, but rather of a whole team whose story he could recall in a matter of seconds. Above the group of pictures is just one of the many presents his teams have given him over the years, the pyramid of success legendary coach John Wooden based his teachings upon while he graced the earth – by teaching more than just how to play basketball.
On this pyramid are terms such as enthusiasm, friendship, initiative, poise, confidence, and self-control.
Before planning each two-hour practice meticulously, making sure no time is wasted, Elwell will keep in mind each of these words, while his players notice one specifically that separates their coach from many other high school varsity coaches: self-control.
While many coaches may kick, scream and spew curses, Elwell takes a much calmer approach.
“I learned in volleyball over time that me being crazy or me yelling doesn’t make the players play much better,” Elwell said. “I watched other coaches, ones that were crazy, and ones that were not so crazy, and I started to realize if I’m gonna make good decisions in the moment, being crazy is not when you make your best decisions.”
Courtney Chaloff, the JV coach and assistant coach for varsity, who started off playing for Elwell back in 2004 and returned for her third year coaching this spring, noted that Elwell has an uncanny calmness that has taught her how to be an influential coach.
“It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable we are or how many stats we are throwing at their faces or what language we are using, if they don’t think that we care about them or don’t like them, they aren’t going to listen to what we have to say,” Chaloff said. “So just yelling, he knows that’s not going to be the way to connect with them.”
Chaloff, who used to coach the girls’ volleyball JV team as well, is now the head coach of the Needham girls’ volleyball program, which she attributes to the lessons Elwell taught her both as a player and later as a coach. Instead of waving his hands in the air and crying about how he lost his JV coach, Elwell offered to help her with any and everything, from planning what parents’ night would look like to incorporating the ever-important motto: we is greater than me.
Elwell developed this mindset, of trying to really connect with his kids, to pay it forward, early on as a child from his own coaches and counselors.
Growing up in Waldoboro, Maine, Elwell was split between his divorced parents, one of which struggled with substance abuse, while the other abused him, affecting all parts of his life.
“Because of the divorce stuff, in school I completely shut down. I can’t remember second through fourth grade,” Elwell said. “During those three years of being abused as a child, I was kept in a basement, and some nasty things happened. While I was trying to believe in myself, I was struggling in school academically. The abuse was not good.”
Elwell was forced to deal with adversity early on, and during the 31 years in which he has been in coaching, he has used these early struggles to better connect with his student-athletes.
Luckily for him, his middle school guidance counselor, the first person in his own life to pay it forward, saw something in the struggling Elwell. The counselor turned him to cross-country, then basketball and baseball, and the undersized middle-school version of Elwell started to a take a turn for the better.
I can be more than what people think of me, Elwell remembers thinking.
As he got to high school and found another coach who would become a key figure in his life, Elwell finally started to believe in himself, even if those around him set the bar too low for his liking.
“Those two [the guidance counselor and coach] kind of kept saying, ‘Keep persevering, keep working hard.’ I had some naysayers, I had some guidance counselors say I shouldn’t go to college. Even in my own family, no one went to college,” he said.
Instead, the family thought he should take a job at a local department store and offered him jobs at a shipyard.
But Elwell did go to college, at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Mass., where he discovered his love for kinesiology, or the study of human movement. It was there, in those kinesiology classes, that Elwell started to realize what he wanted to do with his life.
“The love of learning came late. Sports kept my head above the water,” Elwell said. “As a coach, you get into teaching and coaching so you can pay it forward. My guidance counselor and my coach somehow helped me, saved me, kept me out of trouble. I literally could have reached out and done [the drugs and alcohol].”
Elwell saw the great harm that substance abuse can bring, losing track teammates and classmates to drunk and high driving accidents, while seeing his mother not be present or nurturing, so it was a no brainer for him to stay away from those substances.
At some of those first middle school sports games, and then later in high school, Elwell noticed other kids’ parents in the stands. Other kids were being nurtured and cheered for, while young Todd was left wondering why his parents were not there, too, cheering him on in the stands.
Elwell took this opportunity to hone his communication skills and work ethic, while developing a family-type relationship with a local youth group.
While Elwell’s troubled past has come unbeknownst to many, South Athletic Director Patricia Gonzalez has noticed some of the intricacies that Elwell displays while coaching that stem from his childhood.
“I have seen games where the team has been way behind, like 10 points, and he didn’t panic,” Gonzalez said. “It’s reassuring to see that.”
Not only is it reassuring for the first year AD, but also for all the players in the match, according to the team’s captains, to know that no matter the situation, they will not be screamed at publicly. This style of coaching has been one of the factors in Elwell’s astounding run that included a state championship last year.
“If we make a mistake he won’t get mad at us, so it’s good because when a coach yells at you, that always puts you down and loses your confidence,” senior captain Jonathan Lee said. “You get afraid to do something again.”
While Gonzalez has been impressed with his relaxed demeanor in the face of pressure during games, she has been even more astounded with Elwell’s extensive preparation and analysis that he puts into each game.
“He’s been very effective in the sense that he coaches through practices. His style is really doing the coaching in practice and so in the games he really lets the students, the players, resolve the situation,” Gonzalez said.
“He actually coaches us, while other coaches I’ve had just stood around and let us run drills,” Lee said. “He stops the drills and tells us what we’re doing wrong and shows us the stats to help us see what we need to improve on.”
With the help of managers and assistants, Elwell has created a statistic recording system that would rival many college volleyball programs based largely on a coaching method called GoldMedalSquared, which emphasizes certain language and a heavy dose of statistics. For example, Elwell has incorporated advanced statistics such as serving percentage, point differential, and even earned points percentage for every player on the varsity team.
After an undefeated state championship season and a win streak of over 40 games, the Newton South volleyball program has become Elwell’s closest family. While Lee often likened Elwell to a father figure, Coach still thinks that one morning he will wake up from this amazing run after his long journey, and find that his great accomplishments were some sort of dream.
“Nine years later, inducted into the volleyball hall of fame, state championships. The boys have been in six straight sectional championship matches,” Elwell said, shocked. “Again, you’re pinching yourself, but you look at your journey.”
The most poignant object in Elwell’s office is his huge, portable whiteboard, which recalls memories from freshman year wellness class. He moves it back and forth before and after each practice, determined to find every corner, every new angle and formula to help him, and his volleyball family, succeed. The board is littered with numbers and terms, which somehow plan the most efficient two hour practice around.
At the very top of the whiteboard is that day’s quotation, which Elwell will read before every single practice to set the tone for the day. This particular quotation really hits home for Elwell, as it is from the coach who he seems to idolize the most, John Wooden: “If you let your social activities take precedence over your academic activities, then you will lose your basketball activities.”
Bringing it back to the team, Elwell points out that this year’s version is actually 10-15% better in six different categories than last year’s. He is visibly proud of the culture the volleyball team has created at South, but again brings it back to what the team has overcome, what we all have overcome in the adversity in our own lives.
“Early on we are worried about our reputation, how people perceive us,” Elwell said. “You’re gonna win, you’re gonna lose, but the real question is how you are going to handle it. At the end of the day it’s up to you, what do you want to be, where do you want to go with your life?”
On May 22, this Friday, in South’s final match of the regular season (senior night) against Cambridge, the team will be taking donations to help a teen, Alex Scafuri, from Agawam, who was trying out for their volleyball team before getting run over by a driver under the influence on his way home. Alex is now paralyzed from the neck down. It will be a 6:30 pm game to collect money for donations for the family. He is mending but the family needs help. “We are going to do what we can on our end and pay it forward, it’s a good life lesson for our guys to be selfless,” Elwell said.
