Forman has Coastal Carolina volleyball on steady ascent

Coastal Carolina volleyball coach Jozsef Forman’s path to America started a bit by happenstance.

He was head coach of the Hungarian women’s national team, competing in an international tournament in 1997 in Winnipeg, Canada, when his team was matched up against the United States in the first round. He tried to watch what he thought was an open practice before being confronted by U.S.A. head coach Brian Hosfeld.

“The head coach asked me, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘Hungarian national team.’ He said, ‘OK, you have to leave,’” Forman recalled, telling the story. “The next day we beat them 3-0 and we became good friends. And after I think six years, he called me and he asked me to come to the U.S. and college volleyball. I asked him, ‘Do you want me to help you with the national team?’ He said, ‘No, it’s college.’ I said, ‘I’m not a college coach; I’m a professional coach.’

“In Europe, the college level is really low. [But] I went to Baylor University to look around and said, ‘Wow, you have everything, like a professional team.’ This is how everything started.”

Coastal Carolina is now the beneficiary of that series of events, as Forman has led the Chanticleers to back-to-back Big South championships and NCAA tournament berths with the program in the midst of what might just be the best season in program history.

The Chants (25-4) will take an 18-match winning streak into their first-round matchup with No. 16-seed Creighton (25-8) on Friday afternoon in Chapel Hill, N.C.

In four seasons with the program, Forman has led Coastal Carolina on a steady ascent, improving from a 14-14 record in 2012 to 19 wins the next year and now back-to-back 25-win seasons. The Chants’ .862 winning percentage this year marked the best regular-season finish in school history.

Ask him about that quick climb, though, and he demurs.

“You say ‘so quickly.’ When I look at it, I feel I could have done a better job. Always, I have a feeling it’s supposed to be faster, but I understand what we have to do and what is the priority,” he said this week. “In Europe, I have one or two months to create a good team, and here you have one year, two years, and if you look at the progression of the team it doesn’t matter how many players we lost, graduated, we always play for the championship and I’m really excited about that. What is good is the progression is straight up.”

With his success in his native Hungary, which he says has a rich volleyball history, Forman had offers to coach in Germany, France and Saudi Arabia too around the same time Hosfeld was trying to lure him to Baylor. He didn’t know if he’d get another opportunity to coach in the United States, so he took it.

After serving as the top assistant under Hosfeld at Baylor in 2003, Forman became an assistant coach at Mississippi State from 2004-07 before getting his first head coaching job at the University of New Orleans.

But after three seasons there, the school announced plans to drop down to Division II and he decided he didn’t want to stay. He says that setback was “heartbreaking” as he had a strong recruiting class coming in and believed the program was destined for big things.

So he went to Auburn to become an assistant coach again for a couple seasons. In 2012, Coastal Carolina reached out to him during their search for a new volleyball coach.

“One of my supervisors, Helen Grant, called me and said, ‘You have to call Coastal Carolina.’ And I told her, ‘Helen, is this a Division I or Division II school?’” Forman recalled. “... I told her, ‘This [looks like a] lower level. Why do I have to go there?’ She said, ‘This university has big support for sports, they have a new facility, great location and I think you will be able to recruit players there.’ ... Then I came here, I liked it and it was the best decision.”

He had three other offers at that time, he says, from schools in the Pac 12, Big East and Sun Belt conferences, one a head coaching opportunity and the others to be a top assistant.

But he saw potential at Coastal Carolina.

“When I came to Coastal, I saw the baseball team, I saw Joe Moglia’s [football] team, and soccer team and tennis, golf, everybody was a champion and [I thought] this will impact our program also. ... They were hungry to be successful,” he said.

As was he. When Forman first came to the United States, he told himself he wouldn’t return to Europe until, in his words, “I do something remarkable.”

While his resume is well decorated with success at each stop he’s made, he wanted to be a head coach again and to build his own program. And with the Chants, he saw the potential to be nationally competitive and regularly challenge to advance to the NCAA’s Sweet 16.

So with that in mind, there’s one phrase he can’t stand to hear.

“I cannot be satisfied saying, ‘We are just Coastal.’ When I hear this sentence from anybody I am really upset,” he said. “What is, ‘Just Coastal?’ It’s ‘We are Coastal.’ It doesn’t matter where I am, where I’m working, we have to [give it] 100 percent.”

It’s hard to argue with the results. Forman’s recruiting efforts have paid significant dividends already as sophomore outside hitter Leah Hardeman is a two-time Big South Player of the Year, and she and her supporting cast led the Chants to a 14-0 record in the Big South this season, losing just five sets during the program-best 18-game winning streak.

Forman wants Coastal Carolina to be a destination for athletes, both American and international, who want to develop and prepare for professional careers. He maintains connections with the pro teams in Europe and says Hardeman, junior middle blocker Annayka Legros and senior middle blocker Eszter Nagy will all play professionally there once their time with the Chants is done.

As for Forman, he doesn’t see any pressing need to leave Conway anytime soon.

“A lot of coaches when they’re winning in a smaller conference, they’re hungry for the challenge of going to a bigger school. What I see here, going to a bigger conference doesn’t mean [I] will have more chance to go to Sweet 16,” he said. “My goal is to establish a very strong volleyball program. We have everything. I think already the last two years we are the best team in South Carolina. Why do I have to go [elsewhere], establish the program, bring in new players and wait for one, two, three, four years? We are closer to the Sweet 16 at Coastal Carolina. ... I try to see the bigger picture.”

So close that he believes it could happen this week.

Coastal Carolina is 0-4 all-time in the NCAA tournament, but if the Chants can get past Creighton in the first round of the NCAA tournament on Friday, they would advance to play either host North Carolina or UNC Wilmington, and Forman believes his team can match-up well against those opponents.

“Maybe anybody can say this is not realistic, but what is realistic?” he said. “In the moment, with 18-22-year-old players ... if you can handle the momentum of the game anything can happen.”

This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 9:56 PM with the headline "Forman has Coastal Carolina volleyball on steady ascent."