Airola helped Sandburg soar

Updated: June 14, 2011 12:28PM

Sean Airola is superstitious.
Always has been, always will be.

For every match this season, the Sandburg coach wore a tie the color of the team his Eagles had beaten in the previous match. But after earning a berth in the state title game, Airola switched things up.

For the state championship match against Naperville North, he would be wearing the Eagles’ own colors.

“It was Sandburg blue and gold for sure,” Airola said. “There were a lot of great teams we had to face along the way. That final match, we’re going in, and it’s about us. It doesn’t matter about anybody else at this point.”

As he did all season with the most talented team in the area, Airola pushed all the right buttons, coaching the Eagles to the program’s fourth state title and first since 2000. For that, the first-year Sandburg head coach is the 2011 SouthtownStar Boys Volleyball Coach of the Year.

“I feel like there’s a lot of great coaches in the area, state championship coaches, and to be honored like that, it’s great,” Airola said. “I was blessed to have a great team. I try to motivate my kids with my passion. If they do that, I look great. They’re the ones who do it.”

This season was Airola’s first in charge of the Eagles’ program after two as a sophomore coach and one as a varsity assistant. In two years at Joliet (2006 and 2007), he posted a 36-37 record.

For Airola, the best part about winning the state title may have been sharing it with his mother. Nan Airola won 918 games as the girls coach at Providence, but she never won a state title.

“It’s always been a dream for our family regardless of who got it,” Sean said. “It was fun, just a great experience.”

Coaching the area’s most talented team, the expectations were high for Airola regardless of his first-year status. But with all that talent on the bench, no one was going to feel sorry for the Eagles.

Sandburg cruised into the playoffs with a 32-3 record, but Airola wasted little time addressing a problem he saw in a regional semifinal win over Homewood-Flossmoor.

A post-game message to his team was not heated, just motivating.

“I thought they needed a wake-up call because they just think they’re going to roll over everybody,” Airola said. “We played sluggish, down, and that’s not acceptable. They needed to know that. It was a good turning point.”

The Eagles flipped the switch, taking down Andrew, Providence, Marist, New Trier, Glenbard West and finally Naperville North in dominant fashion to win the title.

Juggling a deep roster and dealing with injuries to key players, Airola had Sandburg peaking at just the right time, including getting over the recent three-year roadblock of losing in the sectional semis.

Going ahead, his work is cut out for him, having set the mark as high as it could go.

“This group set a standard that some of (the underclassmen) saw,” Airola said. “It’s a good tradition to set and hopefully keep going.”

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