Volleyball coach Julie Torbett doesn’t just hate to lose, she hates losing more than she loves winning.
Not that Torbett, 53, doesn’t love to win. During 28 years of coaching college volleyball at the mid-major level, she’s tallied 465 victories, some of which are cemented in her memory.
One especially gratifying win came after her fellow coaches in the Big South Conference picked her team at UNC Asheville to place last in a preseason poll. As the year neared its end, her Bulldogs beat their rivals from Winthrop at home to clinch first place.
“That was the most excited I’d ever been. I was jumping up and down,” Torbett recalls with a smile. “I had never finished last in anything in my life and I didn’t intend to start.”
Unfortunately, the losses Torbett has suffered are also inextricably lodged in her memory.
Once again, her thoughts take her back to Ashville and a match against Winthrop – only this time, she winces.
“We were the No. 4 seed going into the conference championship tournament and we upset the No. 1 seed. That eventually put us in the championship match against Winthrop, a lower seed.
“We were up 13-10 in the fifth and lost 15-13. I’ve never gotten over that. I could describe every point Winthrop scored.”
(Torbett winces again when the media relations person with her Googles her loss record and notes that she’s dropped 404 games. “I didn’t realize I had lost over 400 games,” she says.)
Although devastated, Torbett did the very thing she taught her players to do following a crushing defeat: She found motivation in the ashes.
“I was working on the following season the very next day,” she says.
Torbett also walked away with a reason to be proud of her athletes. “We were the least funded team. We did amazing things with very little money. It’s not always about having the most money or the nicest venue, it’s about having the kids dial in to what you’re doing.”
A Pennsylvania native, Torbett has brought her aversion to losing – and love for winning – to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she began serving as the school’s first director of volleyball and the seventh head coach of its indoor program in January.
Torbett takes the reins of the Lady Mocs after two seasons as head coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Previous stops included East Carolina – where she won the most games in the program’s history – Winthrop and UNC.
While at the helm of the Bulldogs, Torbett added 304 victories and two Big South regular season titles to her ledger. Her counterparts in her division named her Coach of the Year after each championship.
“Julie is a proven winner,” UTC Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Mark Wharton said via press release upon Torbett’s arrival in the Scenic City. “Her resume speaks for itself.”
As director of UTC’s volleyball program, which includes a women’s indoor team and a women’s beach volleyball squad, Torbett is tasked with winning Southern Conference championships and reaching the annual NCAA tournament.
She must do this with an indoor team that has not placed first in its division since 2015 and has not won a SoCon championship since 1998.
“No problem,” Torbett says. “I expect to win.”
To elevate the Lady Mocs to championship status, Torbett intends to draw on the philosophies she developed over her years as a coach, as well as the experience she acquired as a high school and collegiate athlete.
The puzzle
Torbett likens the process of assembling a team to piecing together a puzzle. She seized this metaphor early in her life as she watched her father coach several high school sports in her hometown of Russell, Pennsylvania.
“I remember being at the dinner table and listening to my father talk about building a team around certain pieces, as if he was putting together a puzzle,” Torbett remembers. “Not only did every piece have to fit, but he also had to start over every year.”
Torbett spent her college years playing volleyball under the nurturing eye of the legendary Russ Rose, who retired in 2021 after 43 seasons of coaching women’s volleyball at Penn State University. (Rose’s 1,330-228 win-loss record makes him the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history.)
Although Torbett was short for a volleyball player (which prompted more than one person to tell her she wouldn’t be able to play at Penn State), Rose suggested her diminutive stature could make her a key piece of the puzzle he was assembling.
“Coach Rose employed a defensive player that specialized in digging balls, which was ahead of the times. If you’re shorter, then you’re closer to the floor, which allows you to dig balls easier than the tall girls who are able to hit the ball over the net.”
After Rose recruited Torbett to play, Torbett helped her team to win four conference championships and reach the NCAA tournament every year she was with the squad.
Torbett took several pages from Rose’s book and placed them in hers. To this day, for example, she favors a strong defense over a powerhouse offense.
“Defenses win championships,” she claims. “Having a really good offense won’t matter if you can’t defend your side of the court. But if you’re strong on defense, and the other team can’t score, then you can be moderately good offensively and still win.”
Although Torbett is focused on building a staunch defense, she says the first puzzle piece she’s snapped into place will actually bolster the Lady Moc’s offense: Elaine Redman, a Baylor School three-time varsity letter winner who in 2021 completed a season as the primary setter for the University of Toledo Rockets. (The setter is the main contributor to the offense of the volleyball team.) Redman has transferred to UTC.
“Redman is a very good player; I’m excited about her,” Torbett says. “Now I need to identify the rest of the pieces.”
Although Torbett’s resume spoke for itself as she was pursuing her new job, she’ll do the talking in locker room, where she plans to espouse the philosophies that guided her as an athlete while playing for Penn State and as a coach in the years that followed.
Chief among these will be – no surprises here – working hard and staying positive.
“This is college sports. Everyone does not get a trophy. If you want to win, you’ll find a way to do it,” she says. “But you need to have a good attitude. You can be competitive but have a bad attitude, which is not what I want for my team.”
Torbett hopes to do more than ensure her players’ success on the court; she also wants them to excel in the classroom.
Here again, Torbett brings a winning record to UTC. In addition to coaching 18 Academic All-Big South Selections, the American Volleyball Coaches Association has presented several of her teams with the Academic Team Award for having a cumulative GPA of at least 3.3.
Torbett also intends to focus on empowering her Lady Mocs beyond the court and the classroom through book clubs, community service and other enrichment activities.
“We might read ‘The Energy Bus.’ It’s about women being bad asses and making things happen. They’re going to be mothers, community leaders, lawyers, doctors, teachers and business women, and they’re in college to learn, so it’s important to empower them to believe they can be whatever they envision.
“Other than winning, that’s the most fun I have on the job.”
Consummate athlete
Torbett had fun playing a variety of sports growing up – and still holds records in track at Eisenhower High School in Russell – but she loved volleyball most of all.
“Track was hard because I didn’t like competing as an individual. I preferred the team aspect of volleyball because of the strategy that comes into play,” Torbett explains. “It’s similar to football in terms of offensive and defensive coordination. And having a football coach as a dad, I related to the complexities of the sport.”
Torbett was a middle back and defensive specialist at Penn State, where she earned a degree in exercise and sport science. From there, she secured a job in corporate wellness at Square D in Asheville, North Carolina.
She missed volleyball, though, so she volunteered as an assistant coach for Lisa Rhodes at UNC Ashville. When Rhodes left the school in 1994 to lead the Lady Mocs, Torbett made a bid to become the Bulldogs’ head coach.
UNC Ashville gave her the job, making her one of the youngest Division I head coaches in the county. When Torbett left UNC 17 years later as scholarship money for the program declined, she began a journey that eventually brought her to Chattanooga.
Torbett credits Wharton, with whom she crossed paths at Ashville and East Carolina, with luring her to UTC.
“You have to be a great leader to succeed in athletics, but you also have to have a great leader in the department. And Mark did amazing things in Asheville and East Carolina, so I wanted to work for him.
“We kept in touch, and when this positioned opened, he made the phone call.”
Settling in
As Torbett settles in at UTC, she and her husband, videographer Kelvin Torbett, are familiarizing themselves with their new city. She says Chattanooga is similar to Asheville in terms of size, culture and outdoor amenities, so they’re already beginning to feel at home.
Although Torbett has been living locally for just over a month, she says she’s already picked up on the strong sense of social duty in the city and intends to do her part, as well as ensure the Lady Mocs do theirs.
“I want people in the stands cheering on our girls. I also want our athletes to be involved in the community, so we’ll be in schools reading to kids, out cleaning up roadways and doing whatever else we can to contribute.
“Every relationship is a two-way street. I’m not going to ask people to buy tickets and do nothing in return.”
Although Torbett isn’t coaching UTC’s beach volleyball team, she is looking forward to the squad’s back-to-back home openers Thursday, March 10, against Wilmington and North Alabama. She plans to be courtside at the UTC Sports Complex, cheering on her Lady Mocs.
And she expects them to win.
“I don’t expect to lose, so when I do lose, it’s devastating, especially when I know my team should not have lost. If the girls play their best and still get beat, then I’m OK with losing because someone has to win and someone has to lose.
“But I’m going to try to beat everyone we play. Upsets happen every day. Why not us if we’re going up against someone who’s supposed win?”