By Jeff Faraudo
#WCChoops Columnist | ARCHIVES
2020 WCC HALL OF HONOR PROFILES
 
Nina Matthies would just as soon share the credit with others for sparking the evolution of beach volleyball as a collegiate sport. She points to the support of Kathy DeBoer, executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association, former Pepperdine athletic director Dr. John Watson and the staff at the NCAA.
 
It simply would not have happened, DeBoer said, without the work and credibility that Matthies brought to the process.
 
“And she was in her 60s,” DeBoer said. “Most people, when they'd won as many volleyball championships and awards, would be sitting back. Nina worked harder in the last five years of her career than in the first five years.
 
“She saved her best for the end and she’s totally one of the mothers of college beach volleyball.”
 
Said Pepperdine men’s volleyball coach emeritus Marv Dunphy, “I don’t know all the mechanics but I know this: she was instrumental in that happening.”
 
For that massive contribution, plus more than three decades of high level volleyball coaching at Pepperdine — both indoors and on the beach — Matthies is the Waves’ 2020 inductee into the West Coast Conference Hall of Honor.
 
Now 66, Matthies is two years into retirement, still living in Malibu with Dan, her husband of 41 years. They have two grandchildren now, but Matthies makes the time to get to her old “office” at Zuma Beach on a regular basis. 
 
“I love what I do,” she said. “I still see the (Pepperdine) kids once or a week or more. I have a great relationship with everyone.”
 
Matthies, whose name is pronounced Nine-uh Math-ease, moved with her family to Manhattan Beach from their Iowa farm when she was kid and immediately began her volleyball career.
 
She played collegiately at UCLA, where she was a captain and outside hitter at just 5-foot-6 on a pair of AIAW national championship teams. The Bruins retired her jersey No. 36 in 1987, and a decade later she was named one of the top 25 players in program history.
 
Matthies became an assistant coach for the Bruins and, at age 29 in 1983 was named head coach at Pepperdine while continuing to play professionally, both indoors and outdoors. 
 
It was on the beach where Matthies made her name as one of the all-time greats. She won 43 titles in 139 career tournaments, including seven wins at the Manhattan Beach Open, where she has a place on the Manhattan Beach Volleyball Walk of Fame.
 
In 1986, Matthies led the formation of the Women’s Professional Volleyball Association, the first step toward organizing women's pro beach volleyball events. Four years later, she and teammate Elaine Roque won the WPVA World Championship.
 
All the while, Matthies continued to coach Pepperdine’s indoor team. The WCC adopted women’s volleyball as a sport beginning in ’85, and Matthies guided the Waves to 11 conference titles, winning WCC Coach of the Year 10 times. She assembled a record of 590-343 in 31 indoor seasons.
 
Pepperdine finished in the top-10 nationally three straight seasons through 2003, with that team posting a 27-3 slate and setting a school record with 25 consecutive victories. Matthies’ 2011 team wound up No. 6 in the final rankings, and 20 of her indoor teams qualified for the NCAA tournament, with the 2002 and ’11 squads among just five from the WCC that have advanced as deep as the Elite 8 round.
 
“I had some great indoor moments, some wonderful years. The WCC championships meant a lot to us,” Matthies said. “As life continued on, the opportunities for the beach started to come. Being part of a new sport is very exciting.”
 
Matthies’ legacy in the sport already was cemented. Volleyball magazine pegged her as one of the “Most Influential People in the First 100 Years of Volleyball,” and she was named to the 75th Anniversary All-Era Team by USA Volleyball. Later she was would be inducted into the AVCA Hall of Fame. 
 
But in 2010, the NCAA listed beach volleyball as an emerging sport, and although the Waves didn’t play their first season until the spring of 2012, there was work to be done to complete the process. 
 
Again, Boer credits Matthies, who answered her every late-night call, agreed to chair committees and did all of it while coaching her indoor team and raising two sons.
 
“I said, `Nina, I need you. I need your help, need your leadership, need you to chair this because of the credibility you have in the sport,’” DeBoer said. “She's not an attention seeker. She isn't somebody who’s ever going to pat herself in the back. That’s what made her special. That’s what made her at times difficult to play for.
 
“There’s no excuses in Nina’s world, no shortcuts. You go out there and you win or you lose and then you go back there the next day and you do it again.”
 
The Waves needed no excuses, ruling Zuma Beach in the sport’s infant years. Pepperdine was 14-0 and won the inaugural AVCA national title in 2012. It was the Waves’ 21st national title, but the first claimed by a women’s program.
 
“For us, we had kids that were exposed to the beach at an earlier age,” Matthies said. “We didn’t know how we were going to play. We didn't know if we were good or not until we started. It was nice to be on the forefront and help establish how things were done.
 
“Winning a national championship was fantastic.”
 
Pepperdine was 20-1 in 2013, unbeaten until falling to Long Beach State in the national championship. In spite of that, Matthies was the recipient of the first AVCA National Coach of the Year award.
 
She retired as indoor coach after fall 2012 campaign, finally giving in to the obvious: Coaching both sports was an enormous burden. “The paperwork is probably more of a drain than anything. Coaching is easy,” she said. 
 
Well, perhaps she made it look that way. Dunphy, who is Matthies’ long-time neighbor, said she was “competitive as all get-out and had the heart of a champion.” But the former Pepperdine men’s coach also admires the integrity Matthies brought to her job. “She did things right,” he said. “A lot of times you can be Tony the Tiger, but you cross the line. She never did that.”
 
The Waves won a second AVCA national crown in 2014, going 20-1 to push their three-year record to 54-2. Delaney Knudsen, now a volunteer assistant coach at Pepperdine, was a freshman on the 2014 team.
 
“I had the pleasure and privilege of playing for her toward the end of the career. All the rumors I heard would lead me to believe I got her at her easiest stage,” said Knudsen, who was a senior on the 2017 team that was runner-up in the second official NCAA tournament, the year before Matthies retired with a seven-year beach record of 137-23. 
 
“There were stories about how she could be super gnarly and she definitely would hold you accountable for the high standards of our program,” Knudsen said. “But she was also the Mom for our team. I cried multiple times in her office, not because she was so tough but because I felt comfortable enough with her to open up. She's a huge influence on the person and the player I am today.”
 
DeBoer said that dual quality in Matthies’ personality wasn’t something she easily shared.
 
“She was going to push you. You could see it in her teams,” DeBoer said. “And yet what I always say is she had such a big heart. I saw it personally, how she took care of me and forgave me when I made mistakes.
 
“She had compassion and toughness. She doesn’t want you to see the compassion part but it’s not very far from the surface.”