Betz, 26, was recently hired to be the first boys volleyball coach at Belleville West. The team's inaugural season this spring will consist of a limited number of junior varsity and varsity matches.
Betz's father, Larry, was the first girls volleyball coach at Belleville West when the school established the sport in 1976. Larry Betz led the Maroons to a 23-4 record and fourth-place finish at the state tournament.
That same year, Larry Betz was also the first coach of Belleville West's girls basketball team.
"I think he's pretty excited about it," Austin Betz said. "Starting up a program, he has experience with it. It's kind of cool that they have the boards up in the gym at West that list all the head coaches in all the sports, and I'm excited to get my name up there.
"He started the girls volleyball and the girls basketball there, and now I'm doing the same with the boys."
Coaching volleyball is in the Betzes' bloodlines. Austin's mother, Connie Lisch, was the head girls volleyball coach at Gibault and Freeburg, and also coached at several grade schools in Belleville. She was the first boys volleyball coach at Queen of Peace Grade School in Belleville.
"I'm using my parents as a resource as much as I can," said Austin Betz, who is a 2001 graduate of West and 2005 graduate of Illinois. He is in his second year as a math teacher at West.
Betz has never played organized volleyball, just on a club team at Illinois and recreationally around Belleville. He was a volunteer assistant to Melanie Korte on the girls volleyball team at West last year, which he will do again this fall, and was an assistant to Matt Biegler with Althoff's boys team in the spring.
"The hardest thing for me is teaching the game to people who have never played it before," Betz said. "There's a big difference coaching boys and girls, the way you teach stuff and the way they learn. The girls have been playing for years, and now I'm coaching guys who have never played before. They don't have any concept of the team game. They just want to get up and hit balls and do the fun stuff.
"The biggest challenge for me is coaching guys to play that team game and to understand that there is a team game. I'm trying to figure out ways to ingrain that in them."
Betz said 50 boys signed up for volleyball and 30 participated in a recent camp.
Both West and Belleville East are starting boys volleyball programs this spring, joining Althoff, O'Fallon and Granite City as area schools that offer boys volleyball. Edwardsville may soon follow.
Contact reporter Rod Kloeckner at rkloeckner@bnd.com or 239-2663.
