Huskies bursting with good coaches, good vibes

Washington athletic director Scott Woodward, a restless worrywart, has never met a good night's sleep that he couldn't con. He's always concerned about something. Paranoia is his insomnia.

"Fear of failure is a hell of a motivator," he says, laughing.

Since counting sheep is only a cure in pop culture, perhaps Woodward should count something else to relax his mind at night.

Like the impressive roster of coaches who lead his programs.

They're a potent crew, for sure.

They're stewards of a kind of department-wide success that the university has rarely seen from its teams. The Huskies haven't had this much momentum in this many sports ever. A major reason is that a cluster of mega coaching talents and transcendent program builders are on campus at the same time, and they're aided by a team of athletic administrators that meshes with them perfectly in both personality and aspiration.

Look at this group as a whole, and you'll be amazed. Five coaches — Bob Ernst (women's crew), Michael Callahan (men's crew), Jim McLaughlin (volleyball), Heather Tarr (softball) and Greg Metcalf (track and cross country) — have won national championships. Two years ago, the Huskies won three national titles in the same school year.

New hires fit in well

Those championships don't tell the entire story, however. The Huskies have a men's basketball coach, Lorenzo Romar, who made his program into a consistent national power for the first time in school history. The same has happened with men's golf coach Matt Thurmond, who is finishing the wonderful job started by O.D. Vincent, who is now the senior associate athletic director. Other Huskies coaches currently setting a new standard or bringing their programs back to the national spotlight include Matt Anger (men's tennis), Joanne Bowers (gymnastics) and Jill Hultquist (women's tennis). There are also two long-tenured coaches, Lesle Gallimore (women's soccer) and Mary Lou Mulflur (women's golf), who raised the bar for their programs long ago and continue to add to their success.

And we haven't even mentioned the four good hires that Woodward has made since taking over as the athletic director in 2008. Most prominent is Steve Sarkisian, who is restoring a tradition-rich football program, and his success, as well as the revenue it generates, will benefit the entire athletic department. Baseball coach Lindsay Meggs is in the second year of a rebuilding project, and his team is struggling, but he's a well-regarded skipper. New men's soccer coach Jamie Clark could have a Sark-like impact. And the newest import of them all, Kevin McGuff, is an established winner in women's basketball who should prove himself worthy of the nearly $500,000 salary that Washington is paying him.

For an athletic department once considered just a football and rowing school that didn't have the resources, good weather or desire to be competitive in every sport, this is a dream team of 16 coaches who can keep Washington competitive in all of its 21 sports.

Uncommon camaradeie

And there's a spirit of synergy among this group that makes it special.

"I get stoked just thinking about it," said McLaughlin, who led the volleyball team to a 2005 national title. "It's a great thing. We really do work well together. Everybody's success breeds success. When other coaches need advice or help, we all know we'll be there to assist. It's genuine. And it's easy. It's not like this at every school in the country, either."

Tarr, who won the softball national title in 2009, asked to shadow McLaughlin during one of his camps last summer. He obliged, and she learned much about his teaching methods. Thurmond remembers talking to Sarkisian about social media last year, and Sark convinced the golf coach that he needed to use those tools to help promote his program. Thurmond is on Twitter and Tumblr now, and his nationally ranked program is now one of the most effective golf teams in the nation at using social media.

"You know, if Sark tells me to get into it, I'm going to do it," Thurmond jokes.

The camaraderie of the coaches starts with the two biggest names, Metcalf says. Because Sarkisian and Romar are so congenial, it sets a friendly and collaborative tone in the department. Once the Huskies zeroed in on McGuff, Romar helped recruit him to lead the women's hoops team. Such stories are common in this department, but the vibe is rare.

"I think it's really unique," Tarr says. "Everybody shares. Everybody acts as equals. It's almost impossible to find that kind of collaboration at a school this big."

Years in the making

The building of this staff was a long process that involved several athletic directors. It goes back even further than Barbara Hedges, who was the AD from 1991 to 2004, but she had the largest impact in improving the women's and Olympics sports at Washington. The Huskies have steadily progressed in all non-revenue sports since then, but the football program fell apart. When Woodward was hired, his charge was to fix football, which provides 85 percent of the department's revenue.

"We had an acute problem in football when I came here," Woodward said. "People may have viewed me as a football guy back then, but I really follow the lead of my boss at the time, President Mark Emmert. He always said, 'Whether it's physics or football, we're going to compete at the highest level in whatever we do.' That's how I want to run the athletic department."

Washington is doing that. It still has considerable growth remaining, especially when it comes to facilities, helping Sarkisian finish off the football rebuilding job and continuing to challenge the coaches to pursue excellence. But as a whole, the athletic department is in a better place now. As a leader, Woodward simply wants to play a supportive role. He often challenges his staff to resist complacency, but he's not a micromanager. He sets a vision and lets his employees do their jobs.

"I don't want to run this department like a CEO or govern in an autocratic fashion," Woodward says. "I'm more like the executive producer of a movie."

He's developing a good film. During the 2008-09 season, the Huskies finished 11th in Division I in the Learfield Sports Director's Cup, which takes all sports into account and uses a point system to rank the athletic departments. They finished 24th last year. This year, if their spring sports teams finish well, another top-25 finish is possible.

Aiming higher

In terms of what Washington is and aspires to be, it's doing quite well. But it won't rest. With Woodward in charge, rest is always a foreign concept.

"Look at a guy like Jim McLaughlin, or Kevin McGuff or Sark," Thurmond says. "They all came here dreaming of their programs competing at the highest level. Like Sark said, they all look at it like this program is a sleeping giant. People on the outside see how good we can be. In the Northwest, sometimes we fail to see how awesome we can be and how awesome we are. But we are awesome. And wherever the idea came from that we're not supposed to win because it rains a lot or it's isolated or whatever people might say, it's a faulty idea in the first place.

"We're having breakthroughs here. And we're determined to break through those breakthroughs. There's no reason we can't have handfuls, even armfuls, of national championships."

That's quite a dream. Too bad Worryin' Woodward doesn't sleep well. Then again, the AD doesn't need to close his eyes. Fantasy is turning into reality at Washington.

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com,Twitter: @Jerry_Brewer