Maggie Schmitt

Northview girl’s volleyball coach Chad Rutkowski led his team to victory this season, winning the NLL Championship and getting his 100th win at Northview.

“Our kids have worked exceptionally hard over the last couple of years to make this viable,” Rutowski said.

In the Volleyball High School Coaches Association’s ranking of the top teams in Ohio, “we were listed as a top 15 team every week this year,” a first for the team. Ending out their season, the girls were ranked 12th in the state, an accomplishment not achieved since 2008.

Leading this group of girls to victory requires more than just a few practices—it requires a dedicated coach and team, willing to put in the necessary work. “[Coaching] impacts everything I do,” Rutkowski said. “I’m the most competitive person I’ve met and … I think I bring that in everything I do.”

Rutkowski started off as an assistant coach at Cardinals Church in 2011, then becoming the head coach in 2012. Afterwards, he coached locally at Premier Volleyball before moving to Northview in 2016 as the head coach. With a strong team, Rutkowski was able to take home his 100th NV game win in October, following his 100th career win last year. With such a stride at hand, he has no intention of stopping any time soon.

“We practice together, we train together, all of our things are very program specific, program driven,” the coach said. To truly live out this idea, the team got a new motto this year: ubuntu, a term originating from South Africa. “It’s basically means ‘I am because you are’, ‘I am because we are’, ‘I can’t be my whole self without you.’” The team first heard the phrase after watching a Netflix documentary titled The Playbook, a series highlighting different coaches and how they have gotten to where they are now.

This new phrase is something the team intends to carry with them for a long time. It serves as a reminder who they are and what their purpose is as a team.

“Im a big believer in playing for something bigger than yourself. We take pride that nothing we have has one person’s name on it.”

Schmitt is a Northview Journalism student