Rolovich connecting with local community early in tenure (Part 2)
New Washington State head coach Nick Rolovich and the City of Pullman have a love connection.
Between his playing career (2000-01), life as a graduate assistant (2003-04), assistant coach (2008-11) and head coach (2016-19), Rolovich spent more than decade at the University of Hawaii in sun-drenched Honolulu.
From a weather perspective, moving to the Palouse has undoubtedly been jarring, especially in January and February when the threat of snowstorms is an everyday reality.
On a personal level, though, Rolovich has found Pullman to be a perfect fit for his family and his personality.
“I’m having a ton of fun,” Rolovich said Tuesday during a teleconference with reporters. “I didn’t realize this place was wired like me so much until I got here. On the surface, I like the small town, raising a family here. I like the opportuntity to coach in the Pac-12. I like Coach Leach had built a roster that we could transition fairly easily.
“Then I see the passion of the fanbase. I’m sure there’s some fanbases that have similar passion, but the goodness involved in the passion from the people around here and the family values that are a treasured part of Coug Nation, that’s the part I had no idea about. People like to do good things for people and have a good time. This has turned out to be an even better place than I thought for me, personally.”
The key, of course, for Rolovich and his staff is enthusiastically sharing Pullman’s friendly college town atmosphere with eager recruits and their families. However, the coronavirus crackdown imposed by the state government has hindered his plans to bring numerous recruits onto campus during spring practice. Most of the 2020 signees had planned to attend the spring game on April 25.
“Washington State is a place where you’ve got to get on campus and see this place and then feel it,” Rolovich said. “It’s a positive for us in recruiting. It was trending the right direction. We’ve got to be ready to adjust quickly when this thing opens back up.”
Even though the NCAA imposed a new dead period until April 15 when the coronavirus outbreak struck the country a couple of weeks ago, Rolovich and his assistants are able to video conference with prospects using Zoom or FaceTime.
“FaceTime has been kind of the new (method of recruiting),” Rolovich said. “We just went on a facility tour and stadium tour with a recruit on FaceTime. So, it’s as good as we can provide right now for kind of a virtual tour in substitution for the usual on-campus visits you get this kind of year.”
By attacking recruiting under the current NCAA guidelines, Rolovich has shown he isn’t sitting around and waiting to get the go-ahead from university administrators to begin spring practice. When that comes – if it ever does - nobody knows.
Spring practice or not, Rolovich just wants to have a season to play.
“Whenever they tell me to go, we’re going to go,” Rolovich said. “I’m not going to waste time trying to figure this out. I like pressure anyway. Everyone wants the same thing. When it comes down to it, you’ll probably see a few people grumbling, but they better be appreciative we get to have a season when they open the thing back up. Some of these spring sports didn’t, so I don’t want to hear a bunch of whining when it comes down on how we’re going to move forward.”