Large Enough To Serve You, Small Enough To Know You. So says the motto of Lewis University, a modest little four-year institution perched on the fringe of the southwest suburbs.
Nothing really wrong with that slogan, but nothing especially catchy, either. The school’s marketing folks have been thinking about giving it a tweak. Given recent events, it might be appropriate to add a third line: Good Enough To Stuff You.
Last month, at a tournament in Hawaii, Lewis’ men’s volleyball team shot down 17-time NCAA champion UCLA. The victory helped catapult this tiny Catholic school, currently 7-1 for the season, to the nation’s No. 1 ranking for the last two weeks running.
Lewis began life in the 1930s as a men’s aviation institute, and owned the airport adjacent to the campus until the late ’80s. Now, just six years after beginning play, this sturdy prop plane of a volleyball program is outmaneuvering some of the sport’s mightiest fighter jets.
With only 70 varsity squads in the country, all NCAA schools, regardless of size, compete for the same championship. Twice, in 1996 and again last year, the Division II Flyers have reached the Final Four. Senior All-America outside hitter Victor Rivera set an NCAA season record last year with 915 kills.
And then, in just the third match of this season, came the watershed five-game win against then-No. 1 UCLA, Lewis’ first in seven tries against the Bruins.
All this has been accomplished by a school whose pristine main campus in Romeoville, 35 miles southwest of the Loop, has a full-time enrollment of only 2,500. Two-thirds of the students commute, leaving the campus quiet and nearly deserted at night.
West Coast schools offer bright lights, beaches and year-round warmth. The only surfing at Lewis is on the Internet. The campus hot spot is the Fly-By Lounge, which installed a big-screen television last year just in time for the team’s Final Four appearance.
Yet three starters, including Rivera, were persuaded to migrate here from tropical Puerto Rico. Other players hail from New Zealand and Hawaii and, yes, California. (Four players are from the Chicago area, including senior Brian Johnwick of Lisle, who broke his arm in the first match of the season and has not played since.)
“A lot of parents are comforted by a small, quiet, homey college as opposed to a big metropolitan party school,” Lewis coach Dave Deuser said. “That’s what I sell–a lot of personal attention.”
Some other upstart programs are shaking up the established order. Loyola, which added men’s volleyball after Lewis and also competes in the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, has cracked the nation’s top 10.
But Lewis’ skywriting is the boldest of the new entries. UCLA coach Al Scates, in his 38th season, attributes the Flyers’ climb to the fast-paced, Latin-flavored style expertly executed by Deuser’s players.
Taller teams accustomed to a power game–high, deliberate sets followed by spikes–are struggling to defend against the Flyers’ quick-set offense that emphasizes motion and deception.
“But mainly, they’re very good, very well-coached athletes,” Scates said. “We look forward to playing them. We’ve had some great matches.”
Deuser, an Oak Forest native, coached boys and girls on the club level and was an apprentice assistant with the U.S. men’s national team before his Richards High School boys team won a state championship in 1992.
He started the Flyers from scratch in the 1993-94 season by recruiting a few Canadian players to round out a homegrown Illinois roster. The turning point came the following year, when he kicked a player off the team for disciplinary reasons right before the conference tournament.
Deuser didn’t want the scholarship slot to go to waste, but it was so late in the spring that most prospects had already signed. He pulled out the business card of a Puerto Rican volleyball official he had met at the previous year’s Final Four and placed a phone call.
A few days later, Rivera committed to Lewis, sight unseen. His marginal grades had scared off several big schools, and he sensed this might be his last chance to play on the mainland. He talked to Deuser only once, briefly, before he signed.
“I asked him what jersey number he wanted,” Deuser said.
Both sides, in effect, took a flyer. Rivera, horrified at the contrast between the northern Illinois flatlands and the lush, mountainous terrain of central Puerto Rico, spent some of his first few days at Lewis in tears. Now 22, he is an animated, engaging, confident team leader–and a rainmaker. Three of his current teammates followed him from the island and are playing this season. Three more are redshirt freshmen.
Rivera said his early homesickness and struggles with English help him counsel others.
“I say to the new recruits, `If you have to cry, cry–don’t hold it inside,’ ” he said.
Deuser said Rivera has stayed academically eligible for his four years and that only one player missed a semester because of poor grades last season. The team grade-point average is about 3.2, he said.
The school has had athletic success before. Lewis won three straight NAIA baseball titles in the ’70s (Florida Marlins manager John Boles is an alum), and many of its teams have been Great Lakes Valley Conference champs this decade. But this is the first time the Flyers have buzzed the big guys in Division I.
One thing could complete the picture: a more charged-up student body. Although student admission to Neil Carey Arena (capacity 1,250) is free, the nation’s best team often plays to home crowds of a couple of hundred and an enthusiastic pep band.
The volleyball phenomenon “doesn’t seem like it’s set in yet,” said senior Tim Pajak, sports editor of the student newspaper, the Flyer. Student government treasurer Mark Wodka said the large number of students who commute, have outside jobs or juggle family commitments, makes it difficult to rally around anything.
Rivera said the team can’t be concerned whether anyone is watching.
“We can’t use that as an excuse,” he said. “You play with your heart, not with the crowd.”
The night the Flyers played UCLA in the 1998 Final Four in Hawaii was an exception. The match was televised live at 11:30 p.m. and went a marathon five games. Students packed the Fly-By and the off-campus Field of Dreams sports bar; actual shouts were heard drifting out of dormitory windows. UCLA closed it out at about 3 a.m..
“Everyone was kind of foggy the next day,” recalled Joe Falese, vice president of student affairs.
The whole scenario seems a little fog-shrouded, a little mystical, a little hard to believe. Lewis is on top, as the one bony index finger stenciled onto the Flyers’ practice jerseys, pointing skyward, indicates. Good Enough To Cool Your Jets. Good Enough to Ground You. Lewis has reached cruising altitude.
