A young Ryan Millar was wide eyed.  

He was in Sydney, Australia, for the 2000 summer Olympics, four months away from his 23rd birthday. Millar— 6 feet, 8 inches tall and 215 pounds at the time— was the second youngest player on the U.S. men’s volleyball team.  

Millar, who is now Eastern’s volleyball head coach at 47, will tell you he was “naive” and “ignorant” before his first Olympics. He was on a U.S. National team that hadn’t won a medal since the 1992 Olympics, where they placed third.  

The same theme continued during Millar’s first games.  

“We didn’t win a single match in those Olympics,” Millar said. “So that was a little disappointing, but the overall Olympics experience was really cool. Especially being that young, and being a little naive, it was just really cool to play volleyball at that level.”  

A year before in 1999, Millar was an All-American middle blocker at Bringham Young University. His team won a national title that year, and he won his conference’s Player of the Year award.   

His accolades were enough to get an invitation to train with the U.S. National team. Yet, the invitation didn’t guarantee him a spot on the 12-man Olympic roster.  

“[The invitation came] in 1999, and the Olympics were in 2000,” Millar said. “It was going to be a tall order to be fresh out of college and try to make the Olympic team, but luckily, I was good enough and played well enough that I was able to be on that 12 [person team].”  

Millar turned the invitation to train into a 15-year-long career on the U.S. national team.  

“I use the term ‘ignorance is bliss’ a lot because I didn’t really know what to expect,” Millar said. “All I knew is I was just going to go in and play volleyball and play as hard as I could and try to be good. But, you know, I took the spot of guys that had been on the team for over 10 years.”  

The 2004 Olympics turned out better for Millar and the national team. They still didn’t podium as the American team ended in fourth, losing to Russia in the bronze medal match.  

In 2008, however, the American team won the gold medal. Millar was freshly 30 years old.  

“One of the most prominent reactions or feelings that you have [after winning gold], honestly, is relief,” Millar said. “You put in so much time and effort, and when you don’t perform it just kind of feels like, ‘Man, I’m putting in all this effort, I’m grinding, I’m sacrificing time away from family and friends, and I’m not getting what I feel like we could be getting.’”  

Millar said the grind of being on the U.S. National team can certainly be extensive.  

“You wake up in the morning, you try to scarf down some breakfast, you go into practice, you go kill yourself for six to seven, eight hours, then you go home, try to recover, try to go to sleep and then do that for 15 years,” Millar said.  

Millar also said an Olympic gold medal is what volleyball players work towards. He considers it the peak achievement in a volleyball career.  

“In volleyball, the Olympics is the pinnacle. I mean, it’s not even close,” Millar said. “It’s like a Super Bowl; it’s like an NBA World Championship. I mean, in volleyball, there’s nothing better than winning an Olympic gold medal.”  

Millar continued to play professionally until he retired in the early 2010s. He picked up coaching to stay in the game. Millar said he liked the strategy of the game and the process of developing tactics to give the team a more competitive edge. 

“Pretty much right when I started in college, I knew that I liked the coaching side of the game,” Millar said. 

Millar joined Eastern’s team a month before the beach volleyball season began. The team is 0-5 on the season. Their lone home meet is on April 10, at Sister City Park against Lindenwood.  

Aidan Cusack can be reached at 581-2812 or at atcusack@eiu.edu.