Coach, wife, mother, mentor, advisor, counselor and confidant.
Patti Snyder-Park fills many roles in her daily routine but friends and players say one demeanor keeps shining through.
Kindness.
The long-time ASU volleyball coach has seen players go from recruits to super stars under her wing and after this season, her 14th as head coach, she will no longer control the Sun Devil program.
Snyder-Park made the decision to retire after this season earlier this year for family reasons. Her duties as a wife and mother outweighed her duties as a coach and so she decided to walk away from the job that has become synonymous with her name.
But her influence will continue in the hearts and memories of her players. ASU assistant coach Terri Cox, a former player under Snyder-Park, cited the passion of her former coach and devotion to family as a reason to begin coaching.
"Patti's just had such a great positive attitude through all her years of coaching and it made me realize it was something I wanted to go into," Cox said. "Considering she is a devoted mother and a coach and she was able to pull it all together and now here I am, a mother. She showed me I can do it just as well as she did."
Cox, like many current and former ASU players, admires Snyder-Park's energetic approach to volleyball and the loving relationships developed off the court.
"Patti is one of those people that if you were alone on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day she would invite you into her family like you were one of her own," Cox said.
"She's always been easy to approach and she's very helpful off the court," senior middle blocker Julia Leddy said of her coach. "She doesn't just think of us as players, she helps us out with school and problems outside of volleyball. She's a coach I can look to as a friend after I graduate."
Snyder-Park excelled on the coaching side of her job, taking ASU to six NCAA tournaments and winning the most matches in ASU history, by coming to the court each day with a "feisty" attitude.
"I've always been impressed with how energetic she is," senior libero Brittany Arnett said. "Every day she comes in with high energy and every week she has a different game plan for us."
"She's like a fireball of coach," Leddy said. "She always wants us to be aggressive, and she's fun to work with."
Players and coaches vouch for the effort that Snyder-Park puts into each match and claim that her attitude rubs off on everyone around her.
"You know that she always studies the videos of the matches and she knows what we need to know that week for our matches that weekend," Arnett said. "All of Patti's themes transfer off the court, this year especially because she wants us to learn that volleyball isn't life."
During Snyder-Park's tenure as coach, seven Sun Devil volleyball players have been awarded academic All-American status and 29 players have been named to the All-Pac-10 academic team. But, according to Cox, Snyder-Park didn't stop doing her job when her players graduated.
"Patti's always made her alumni feel very welcome, inviting them back for home matches and having the alumni game," Cox said.
Junior outside hitter Kim Mehlhorn, a Tempe native, has known Snyder-Park since sixth grade and doesn't see her coach completely disappearing from the ASU volleyball scene.
"I see her coming to things and still being there if we need her off the court," Mehlhorn said, adding that Snyder-Park's personality will be missed by the program. "I think [ASU will miss] just her fun personality, she likes to play jokes. We could play volleyball and still have fun."
Life lessons learned seems to be a theme among current players as each individual can connect a different lesson with their coach's teachings.
"[Snyder-Park] has helped me out with not sweating the small stuff, I'm a perfectionist and she helps me see that it's not that big of a deal," Leddy said. "It's only one bad play or one bad game in the scheme of things."
"[Snyder-Park taught] to give 100 percent," Mehlhorn said, "and you can only control so much, and if you give 100 percent everything else will fall into place."
When junior libero Courtney Blocher first joined the ASU squad, she had already known Snyder-Park for several years. Blocher's first year at ASU was rocky on the academic front and her coach was there to help out.
"Patti is a really caring coach," Blocher said. "I struggled a little in school my freshman year, she got on me but she went about it in a nice way. She knows how to make you feel better, and if you do something wrong, she will tell you how to fix it in a positive way."
Reach the reporter at cameron.eickmeyer@asu.edu.
