Growing up I wanted to be great.Academics sports the arts it didn’t really matter. I just had a passion to excel.Turns out baseball was my fate.I spent many a sleepless night dreaming of winning championships hoisting trophies and spraying $800 champagne around the clubhouse like it was going out of style. I was lucky to be in baseball.A fourteen-year career three tattered gloves and a whole big bucket of memories later I realized it takes a little something more to be great. And even a whole lot of extras to be the best.There are plenty of talented artists around the world spending decades mastering their craft– and then there’s Picasso. There are dozens of Hall of Fame basketball wizards oozing with extraordinary ability from every pore– and then there’s Michael Jordan. There have been hundreds of men’s volleyball coaches over the years teaching guiding and mentoring thousands of student athletes– but then there’s Pepperdine’s own– Marv Dunphy.Some people it seems are born to surpass greatness before the first grade; on a streamlined flight straight for the tippy-top. Dunphy exudes confidence and authority yet is a down-to-earth humble winner.Like Jared Fogel’s fat pants transformed Subway into a contender Dunphy has put the Waves’ volleyball program on the map– In a big way. He has coached 10 Pepperdine players who would later go on to play in the Olympic Games and 18 of his men were named first-team All-Americans. Dunphy was selected as the National Coach of the Year in 2005 and is a three-time recipient of the MPSF Coach of the Year honor. This is partly due to the fact his teams have won four NCAA national championships under his tutelage. Dunphy’s resume is so long it has Dunder Mifflin working overtime.Very few men of this caliber have put up the kind of gaudy stats Dunphy has. On Feb. 26 he entered an elite class of legendary coaches. Only four other men can call themselves members of the exclusive 500 club. Even before this distinction Dunphy had opposing teams crying before they got off the bus. His presence on the sideline alone was enough to intimidate them.Dunphy has proven over the decades it takes years of preparation and dedication to become an overnight success story.How does one man take the helm of a university volleyball program and nearly three decades later deliver win No.-500? Must be that Dunphy and his players have a refuse-to-lose attitude. As it turns out the Nationals Orioles and Pirates all have more losses in the last two Major League Baseball seasons than Dunphy has in his entire 27-year career combined.Simply remarkable.If you’ve never seen Jordan dunk Astaire dance or Portier act watch Dunphy coach. It’s all the same. Art.It’s not every day you get a chance to witness history in the making. Thanks to Dunphy I did.With his no-nonsense demeanor and Morgan Freeman-esque wisdom Dunphy and the Waves are in poised to make a run at what would be the school’s fifth national championship come May. He set out to make a difference in hundreds of young men’s lives over the years and just happened to also build a top-notch volleyball powerhouse in the process.Dunphy has given fans near and far experiences and memories they will never forget. He has helped make the game what it is today. But of course his humility shines through even on this momentous occasion.Marv Dunphy thinks he’s lucky to be in volleyball. I think it’s the other way around.