Erasing the Maybe From His Thoughts, Hilbert Says Goodbye
Legendary coach grew CSU volleyball into a community event
Mike Brohard
One doesn’t simply wake up on a Wednesday morning and decide today is the day.
A decision of the magnitude announced Monday – Tom Hilbert is retiring as the head coach of the Colorado State volleyball team at the conclusion of the season – is contemplated over time. There is the mental back and forth inside the mind of the architect.
Every nuance must be considered, much in the same style as the program was built.
“I think this decision actually culminated for years, where you start thinking about the things in life you want to do and what you can’t do because of this job, and some of the physical and mental impacts it has on you as you get older,” Hilbert said, sitting in his office. “Those things tend to get worse, for me anyway. I started thinking about it during covid and just hung on. It felt like I had a pretty good group of players, and I was still able to effectively do this job. But, when I looked at it and said there might be other, younger coaches who could add some things to this program, that’s when I decided maybe if I can afford it, I should go.”
“Maybe” hung around for a while. But there came a point when reality finally hit.
Hilbert arrived for the 1997 season, and he didn’t exactly take over an abandoned building. Rich Feller had won nearly 300 matches in his 14 seasons, 299 to be exact. What Hilbert did was make Colorado State volleyball an event. Not just for those on campus, but in the surrounding community of Fort Collins. He created a fervor for a sport where one had not been.
He generated interest in a program and did so by getting people who were not volleyball fans to become ardent supporters of not just his team, but the players he brought to campus. His Rams were visible in the community, and they were friendly and approachable. They handed out schedules at events in Old Town and invited people to come watch them play.
They did, and they continued to come.
“He’s set a standard for the sport of volleyball in this state,” said assistant coach Adrianna Blackman, who is also a former player of Hilbert’s. “I know the coach before him, Rich Feller, was successful, but Tom set the standard that success is sustainable for a long period of time.”
The wins definitely helped, and no one at Colorado State has won at Hilbert’s level.
He is the most successful coach in university history, with 635 wins heading into this final homestand to end the regular season to just 161 losses, a .798 winning percentage. The old record was 352 wins, held by men’s basketball coach Jim Williams, and Hilbert surpassed that more than a decade ago.
He has swatted away all praise directed at him as he passed one milestone or another – a 500th win at the school or No. 800 of his career. There was a time and place for all of that, which has now arrived.
In 35 years of coaching (he started his career at Idaho), he currently ranks fifth among active Division I coaches in career wins with a record of 811-231, which places him 10th among the active in career winning percentage (.778). All time, he ranks 16th among active coaches in winning percentage, 17th in victories.
“Yes, it’s cool. I’m very proud,” Hilbert said. “I’ve had a wonderful career and I think I’ve been blessed. I’ve had great players and I’ve been able to draw great competition in here and beat them. We’ve created a program that is bigger than any one person, and I’m very proud of that.”
The big wins are always great, but not nearly as important as who and what led them into existence. He knows he will be asked to talk about his favorite moments, which in a way is an unfair and loaded question, because there are just too many of them for a man who guided teams to 24 NCAA Tournaments and six trips to the Sweet 16. It’s akin to asking which is the favorite child. There may be one, but the answer is never uttered publicly.
I thank them for trusting me and my assistants to take care of them and manage this experience so they could walk away a more powerful person.Tom Hilbert
The favorite part of his career? That’s easy.
“There’s no doubt about that when people ask what’s my favorite part of the job, it’s watching someone go from 17 to 22 and how their life and personality and what they’re about monumentally change, and you got to play a little role in that by creating an empowering experience for them,” Hilbert said. “That’s a great gift to me, as much as it is to anybody in this program. I want to thank these players for what they gave, not just to me, but to the program. And that is giving to me when they’re giving to the program. I thank them for trusting me and my assistants to take care of them and manage this experience so they could walk away a more powerful person.”
What he has seen is the eras change. The game and the players are not the same, even if the expectations are. It’s been the little things, looking at the office chairs and wondering how long they’ve had them. It’s taking a CD to practice to play music and having players who had not seen one.
These things make him laugh. So did the players. He ran through every emotion possible with them. He’s laughed plenty, celebrated often and shed more than a few tears. In 35 years, he adapted to it all and still put a winning program on the court, each team needed something a little different from him.
Whatever it was, he found the trigger to inspire their passion.
“I think he has such an acute passion for competition and bringing out the best in his student-athletes,” Director of Athletics Joe Parker said. “He’s not a coach, he’s an artist. I think he’s really done a nice job in trying to understand all components that roll up to make a team great and trying to understand how each student-athlete can make a contribution that’s helpful to the team. Then it’s putting all those pieces together. There’s never been a season where I have associated with Tom where he has not downplayed what his expectations were likely to be. It was also a little bit of the glass half full or an Eeyore moment and projecting a lot of positive accolades on all the programs he was going to have to compete against, but it seemed like almost every year they were able to put together a highly competitive team which represented this university well.”
It makes sense the pandemic would be a trigger for Hilbert to consider what’s next in his life. He has always felt a huge part of his role was to create the greatest student-athlete experience for all of his players. Closing schools down and moving a season to the spring is one thing but taking away team-bonding activities was another. It honestly worried him to know his players were not getting all they deserved.
He personally went out and fundraised in the community so his teams could take overseas trips which were partially about the volleyball, but mostly once-in-a-lifetime experiences for them. A chance to see countries they never considered visiting. A chance for his players to be in tight quarters with each other and learn about empathy, understanding and agreeing to disagree.
He didn’t just coach his players, he came to know them. He wanted to understand them and help them find their hopes and dreams and then achieve them, on and off the court. His postseason sendoffs for players are legendary and come directly from the heart.
That was the man Blackman wanted to play for more than anything.
“Coming from a big family, I wanted a family environment and people to support me more than just as an athlete. It was a big reason I chose here,” she said. “The more our relationship has grown, I knew he cared about that stuff when I was in it, but the thing that shows how much he cares are the banquet nights. He spends countless hours and days preparing this awesome sendoff in various fashions. You just don’t do that if you don’t care about the person more than the player.
“As our relationship has evolved into me being a coach for him, it’s the same thing. When I found out I was pregnant, he said, ‘we’ll do everything we can do to support you, and if you don’t feel like you can do this and be a mom, I’m not doing my job.’ That’s the piece that makes him so good. He’s able to push people – and there are times you don’t like him – but he also has that level of knowing when to back off and show he cares a lot about you as a person more than anything that can happen on a volleyball court.”
Hilbert could be outspoken at times. He could push buttons if he felt he needed to in order to protect his program and his players. Everything about him made it clear to Parker when the time came, it would be a decision Hilbert had to make on his own.
“I told Tom from the first moment I felt comfortable describing my expectations, I told him I would never be the one to tell him it was time for something different,” Parker said. “I always told him it’s going to be something he can determine when it’s right. So, for the last couple of years, he’s kind of poked around the edges of what that would feel like to make that decision, and I was as agnostic as I could be to make sure he was not feeling any leading questions or dialog from me. I wanted it to be totally his choice and his decision. I think what he’s done here at CSU has absolutely earned that level of respect, and I also know Tom has such high expectations for the program himself he was going to sense when that moment was correct and right.
“I think it’s great. I wish this for everyone who chooses to coach, because I think it’s one of the hardest professions anyone can decide to do at the Division I level, because of the expectations. After every contest, there’s only one winner and I think he’s navigated it as well as anyone I’ve ever seen.”
So, Hilbert toyed with the idea. At the beginning of the season, he told his staff this may be the year, but even then, it was still a maybe. What needed to happen was something he’d never done before in guiding the program he built.
He was going to have to be selfish. Make a decision which was about him, not it.
Which still weighs on him. The lives of his staff could very well be altered. The program will sign fresh players this week he actively recruited, knowing the thought of leaving was in the back of his mind even if it wasn’t quite yet a strong consideration. There is never a right time when one considers the whole. There are always going to be special teams and special players a coach doesn’t feel right leaving.
“That’s a good way to put it, because you do feel selfish. This job is about giving, it’s about managing other people’s experiences,” Hilbert said. “It’s about telling people about the future and how they’re going to help us, so there is no way to do this without somebody feeling like you’ve betrayed them. I hope that doesn’t happen, but you know … I recruited all summer long knowing it was a possibility. Now it’s here, and it’s a tough thing to tell people and really face everybody.”
What he doesn’t want is this to be about him, at least not now. There are two regular season matches to play at Moby Arena and four in all, matches to help determine seeding for the upcoming Mountain West Tournament the Rams will host Thanksgiving weekend. There is another trophy and NCAA berth to chase, and a special someone who Hilbert strongly believes deserves her moment in the spotlight.
“I want to win the Mountain West Tournament, I want Jacqi Van Liefde to exit on a high note,” he said. “I think Jacqi has had a great career here. She’s given us five years. She’s a great teammate and a great kid. I don’t want to take anything away from her. These seniors deserve these moments.”
His moment will come, and he wants to invite all the players he’s coached. They are the reason he sought out this profession, and the reason people want to celebrate his career. All he ever wanted to do when he started coaching was to make an impact.
He wanted to give back to the sport of volleyball, which he did. He became embedded in the Fort Collins community. He made it clear he is not leaving what he calls the greatest town in America to coach collegiate volleyball, and he made it clear he’s not done contributing to the sport.
How and when it happens, he’s not sure. He’ll leave it to the universe to guide those next steps.
He once joked to Bri Olmstead, a former player and his longtime director of operations, he would know he had made it when a bobblehead was made of him. So, Olmstead had two created.
One was sold at an auction to raise money for the program, the other sits in a glass case behind his desk. He’s taken his championship rings home, too. Still, there is so much he will take with him he won’t carry out in a box, but rather his heart and mind.
Those are the true keepsakes of a respected – a legendary – career.
Even when he decided it was time, it still didn’t feel real. He went to Parker’s office and asked him to lay out an exit plan, one which took into consideration the players, the recruiting cycle and the transfer portal. A few weeks later, Parker delivered an aggressive plan, which Hilbert admired. Then he went and met with Parker.
“He laid that timeline down, and I met with him, and I said I think this works,” Hilbert said. “I walked out of his office, I walked into the stairwell, and I started crying. That’s when it was like, s---, this is it.
“This job is about routine. There’s a recruiting period and a season and preparation and a preseason. It’s these routines. You’re continuing a routine, so it doesn’t give you time to sit back and think about what’s going on. That moment, it was real.”
“Maybe” no longer exists, but the routine does. The one which will determine which day will be his last as Colorado State’s volleyball coach. When he wakes up on the Wednesday the Mountain West Tournament begins, the only thought in his mind will be how to reach Friday’s championship match.
And, with a bit of Moby Madness, even a few more beyond.