personality assignment-rough draft

Hate him or love him, he got the job and is getting it done.

Supervising volleyball camps during the summer, running long and excruciating practices, organizing pre- and post-season workout plans for the team and making his players give up their Sundays for five months for early morning fundraisers, Brian (Lumpy) Schaefer does it all for the teams that he coaches. With the recent change from an assistant coach making just over $15,500 a year under Marty Petersen to taking over as head coach of the women’s program, the 6'0", blue eyed, soft-spoken coach has set out to follow in Petersen’s footsteps. Petersen’s official retirement as head coach on Sept. 25 of 2004, left Schaefer and his assistant Jason Wheelock in complete control of an outstanding volleyball program. Schaefer was officially announced as the women’s head coach in March 2005.

“As being a freshman who plays on varsity under his coaching here, I got the sense that Lumpy has a good head on his shoulders,” said Aaron Wayne. “I don’t really know much of what he has done with teams in the past but he has done a lot for our team this year and has made several sacrifices which we all appreciate.”

“I’ve always hated preseason practices,” said Tim Weis. “Lumpy always made us run all the time, swim laps even when we didn’t want to and workout in the weight room three days a week. Some of that stuff is hard to do if you have to work to be able to stay in school.”

Schaefer was born in a two-parent household in Kaukauna, Wis. in 1971. Both of his parents worked hard to give him and his older sister an opportunity He grew up with only one sibling at home. While attending high school in Kaukauna from 1987-90, he received “B” average grades throughout his time there. To pass the time, he worked at Country Kitchen as a waiter and officiated volleyball at a local recreation center which paid for his well-rounded wardrobe, fancy hair cuts and dinner with girlfriends that he had.

Schaefer, who now lives in a quite neighborhood in the downtown Oshkosh area, got his nickname “Lumpy” his freshman year of college at UW-Oshkosh in 1992.

“My first year here, I tried out for the men’s team and the coaches had so many people trying out that year that they couldn’t remember everyone’s name so they gave us all nicknames,” said Schaefer. “They called me Lumpy because they thought that reminded them of the guy from the “Leave it to Beaver” show called Lumpy who was Beaver's friend.”

“I always thought that people called him Lumpy because he was just out of shape or slow on the court,” said former player Amanda Delgadillo.

Schaefer finished undergraduate school at UW-Oshkosh with a degree in social work. He took over the men’s volleyball program in 1996 as a graduate student in educational leadership at UW-Oshkosh as the head coach and team president from former player and head coach Jim Boos. Ever since then, he has been hard at work to attract great players to come to Oshkosh to play for him. There have been several great players who have amounted to All-American status under his coaching in the years he has been at UW-Oshkosh, some being Matt Lewin, Andrew Sederberg, Joe Daniels, Amanda Delgadillo, Christina Southerland, Jeff Thomas and more.

“I enjoyed coaching all of these players,” said Schaefer. “They all had a unique ability about them that enabled them to achieve that All-American level and help their team to win those big matches when they needed to.”

On the court, Schaefer's negative comments sometimes outweighs his awareness of the effect they have on his players' performances.

"A lot of the stuff that Lumpy says on the bench is negative and never really helps us play better," said senior setter Andrew Sederberg.

Off the court Schaefer is mellow, outgoing and easy-going as the next person.