It’s a sun-spotted day in Central Pennsylvania. One where an hour in peak afternoon is best spent outside. Situated steps away from Penn State’s historic Rec Hall, women’s volleyball head coach Russ Rose is soaking in the stream of a few rejuvenating rays. To an average passerby, he’s a man on a bench, right leg crossed, resting on the left knee, newspaper outstretched, and perhaps a cigar nearby.

Yes, a cigar.

The bench in fact, even has his name on it, presented to him and his family, four boys and wife, Lori, in 2013, when Rose received the Honorary Penn State Alumni Award, one of the most prestigious of its kind and given when the Alumni Association wishes to honor an exceptional individual.

With a smile and maybe even a chuckle at the mention of a king in front of his castle, he’ll have no part in the phrase. Rather, just a Rose in Happy Valley, doing it his way.

Already underway in his 39th season at the helm of one of the most storied women’s volleyball programs in the country, Rose’s name is synonymous with the pride and tradition encompassing the more than 14,000 days he’s spent as the leader of one of the nation’s elite teams.

To put it simply, a snapshot of his legendary tenure might read something like this: A head coach who has built a powerhouse program and kept it among the best for nearly 40 years, amassing a stunning career record of 1,246-198, entering the 2017 NCAA Tournament (which had not begun at press time). He has guided his teams to a record-setting seven NCAA national titles and 17 Big Ten titles, most recently this season. His program is one of only two programs to compete in all 36 NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball National Championship events. He has produced multiple Olympians, four AVCA National Players of the Year, 14 Big Ten Conference Players of the Year and at least one AVCA All-American in 37 of 38 seasons. His student-athletes excel in the classroom as well, with an outstanding 182 Academic All-Big Ten selections and 12 Academic All-Americans, who have earned 18 selections.

As both a coach and educator, it’s those who know Rose best who know the pomp and pageantry are simply not the things he prefers to focus on.

Rose graduated from George Williams College in 1975, which was once located in Hyde Park, Chicago and later moved to Downers Grove, Illinois before being acquired by Aurora University. Rose played volleyball on the program’s 1974 NAIA national championship team and later spent time as an assistant coach for both men’s and women’s volleyball.

In 1978, he completed his master’s degree at Nebraska, coaching the junior varsity team while writing his thesis in volleyball statistics. Upon graduation, Rose was set to continue his postgraduate career at BYU, working toward an EdD, but decided to change his mind.

In the spring of 1979, Rose was offered an opportunity to coach women’s volleyball at Penn State, following legendary coach Tom Tait, who had been the coach of both the men’s and women’s teams. Tait had been the head coach since the women’s team’s inception in 1976, bolstered by Penn State’s pioneering efforts surrounding Title IX, which saw the Nittany Lions sponsor at least 12 women’s varsity teams on campus by the time legislation was enacted in 1972.

A sports aficionado who once paused a mid-match TV interview for a score update from game four of the 2016 National League Championship Series between the Cubs and the Dodgers, Rose was intrigued, but also attracted to an educational component.

For Rose, Penn State was home to one of the nation’s top kinesiology programs in the late 1970’s. A lifelong avid reader, he had already read a variety of publications from distinguished faculty members such as Dr. Richard Nelson (professor emeritus of exercise and sports science), Dorothy Harris (sport psychology) and Dr. Peter Cavanagh (distinguished professor emeritus of locomotion studies).

“I thought it would be exciting professionally because when I came in, I had a one-third coaching, one-third teaching professional classes, which was elementary education for a number of years, and one-third activity classes,” Rose said. “A full teaching load for us back then was 16 classes a year.”

Rose accepted and got to work. Without an office or a phone, Rose was assigned a locker in Rec Hall placed right next to one with a name plate that read, “Joe Paterno.”

“Although I never saw him, mine didn’t have anything on it, but he had a name plate and I saw it there,” Rose said.

Rose’s first career victory at Penn State came Sept. 21, 1979, when he guided the Nittany Lions to a 2-0 win against Navy in the season opener at the George Washington Invitational. He went on to lead the 1979 Penn State women’s volleyball team to a 32-9 overall record in his first season, earning a $400 raise.

Rose then moved to a small office, shared with three other coaches at the time, baseball coach Chuck Medlar, wrestling coach Rich Lorenzo and Tait.

“I learned a lot about teaching from coach Tait and I learned a lot about the administration of a program and keeping the boys in line from coach Lorenzo, and a little bit about smoking in your office from coach Medlar,” Rose said. “It was great to try and build a program like everybody else’s and I’ve never been about trying to be better than anybody else.”

Like any great process though, building anything always begins with a solid foundation.

“The players who were here when I arrived and started building the program, they were really the pioneers of the program who laid the strongest foundation for the future,” Rose said.

It was former Nittany Lions like Ellen Crandall, Penn State’s first All-American (1979-81), who also sewed the numbers on some of the team’s earliest uniforms – which Rose purchased with funds out of his own pocket.

“It was always about building a program that those players and their families and Penn State could be proud of,” Rose said. “It was my responsibility to push them and to try to shape what was just a newly formulated culture.”

With both men’s and women’s basketball also calling Rec Hall home in a pre-Bryce Jordan Center era, Rose had to get creative.

“Men’s basketball had the main gym and women’s basketball had the south gym and then wrestling had had their dates and men’s and women’s gymnastics had their dates,” Rose said. “We were walking to the IM Building to practice.”

There was also recruiting. In a world now dominated by intricate recruiting strategies often fiercely guarded by coaches, Rose’s early tactics were hardly scientific.

“When I was in Nebraska we didn’t do any recruiting,” Rose said. “We just had really good players in the state of Nebraska coming out. When I was at George Williams, we just took kids who wanted to be physical education majors and tried to snatch them up before the gymnastics coach got them.”

With just three in-state scholarships, Rose found himself scanning campus for prospective student-athletes, even opening leftover six-month old letters in a mail crate from Tait’s tenure, reaching out to once-interested recruits to see if they would consider Penn State. Most had already moved on.

As Rose often tells his children and student-athletes to this day though, not every experience is good, but they are all valuable.

“For maybe the first 12 years I never had a backup setter because I couldn’t invest money in somebody who wasn’t going to play,” Rose said. “I would have somebody and say, you’re the setter for four years and then to the next person, you’re the next setter for four years and by the way, you can’t get hurt because I’m not recruiting another setter.”

In Rose’s first 12 seasons, Penn State put together a 402-87 record, won eight consecutive Atlantic 10 titles and made it to the NCAA Tournament in every single year since the event first began in 1981.

In 1991, Penn State played its first season as a member of the Big Ten Conference and the Nittany Lions became both fully funded and fully staffed.

Penn State won its first Big Ten title in 1992 and reached the NCAA national title match before losing to Long Beach State in four sets in 1993.

From 1994-98, Penn State won four Big Ten titles and made three more trips to the NCAA national semifinals, losing in the finals in 1997 and 1998, both times to Long Beach State.

In Rose’s 21st season, Penn State went 36-1 and a perfect 20-0 in conference play on the way to its first NCAA national championship in program history, defeating Stanford in straight sets.

The 1999 national championship proved merely the beginning though, as the Nittany Lions continued to develop into a perennial women’s volleyball powerhouse.

In 2007, Penn State sparked its unprecedented streak of four consecutive NCAA championships from 2007-10. Penn State won 109 consecutive matches from Sept. 21, 2007 to Sept. 11, 2010, which included back-to-back 38-0 seasons in 2008 and 2009, winning 69 of 76 matches in straight sets.

For Rose, what’s important in life is consistency, and it’s perhaps the strongest thread woven within the identity of each of his team’s through the years.

“I used to say we could do a really good instructional video but it doesn’t mean we’re going to grind it out at 13-13 in the fifth,” Rose said. “Those things happen because players want to make things happen.”

"Some would say I’m stubborn and unrelenting and unreasonable, and I would say what’s your point?" - Russ Rose

It’s no secret that Rose’s methods might be called old fashioned. He calls them consistent. From three-a-day summer preseason sessions in the confines of Rec Hall’s south gym, which has no air conditioning, to Rose’s occasional curt sarcasm or the unique set of statistics kept only by him. While Rose knows he may be considered an acquired taste, he simply doesn’t care.

“Some would say I’m stubborn and unrelenting and unreasonable, and I would say what’s your point,” Rose said. “I’m not ever going to say it’s the right way. I’m just going to say it’s my way.”

Through the main doors at Rec Hall, a quick left and a short walk down the hallway leads to the first door on the left, the one marked Penn State women’s volleyball.

Inside the humble office, the quote “Believe deep down in your heart that you’re destined to do great things,” is embossed on a plaque above a single door sandwiched in between a pair of glass cases filled to capacity with trophies.

Upon entering Rose’s office, the walls are decorated from floor to ceiling with memories of an illustrious career. Photos of old friends and supporters, former players and coaches hung from nearly every free space.

From game balls and a few unclaimed trophies to a custom blue and white volleyball stained glass window in the corner, there’s not a single award with Rose’s name it. Not one of the five national coach of the year awards, or the 15 Big Ten coach of the year honors are in sight, perhaps hidden somewhere within the bowels of Rec Hall. Rose got rid of those many years ago.

“I love looking at the pictures of the players because they’re the ones who won it,” Rose said “They’re the ones who earned it, they’re the ones who had to battle every day against either my expectations for them to get better, or even their own expectations that they had to handle.”

Gazing at every inch of the spectacular display, it’s hard not to contemplate the secret to all the success.

“Well if I knew it, I wouldn’t discuss it because I’d give up the secret,” Rose said.

Perhaps in the case of the winningest women’s volleyball head coach of all time, there really isn’t a secret. Rather it’s simply embedded in who he is as coach and how much he cares. For Penn State, yes, but most of all for his student-athletes.

“Not everyone is a great player but everybody can care,” Rose said. “That’s one of the great things about coaching or teaching, you get to see how people develop and how they battle in life and know that you might have had some small part in aiding their development because you were with them during some hard times and you didn’t assist them in quitting and finding the easy way out. You work with them, build it and keep it going.”

Rose of course, knows his program has won seven national championships, but even he’ll admit he can’t name the location or the matchups off-hand. For Rose, some of his best work is done when nobody is watching.

Inside those four decorated walls at 201 Rec Hall, Rose’s desk is covered in papers. Often times visitors walk in to find him writing, as he looks up from the stacks but keeps the old school R&B playing softly in the background.

Maybe it’s a scouting report, maybe it’s recruiting or something else team-related, but at least every day he’s writing handwritten notes.

Be it birthdays, anniversaries or congratulatory messages, Rose doesn’t typically miss a milestone, penning in what he considers terrible handwriting, notes to former student-athletes in between drop-ins from his current student-athletes.

All-Americans or Olympians, it makes no difference to Rose, who takes time to reach out when it’s appropriate. Pick a student-athlete from any decade and Rose doesn’t hesitate, he knows all the best stories, where her career path took her after Penn State and what she’s up to these days.

When his yearly printed media guides arrive, Rose encloses a handwritten note inside each one and ships it off, even going beyond former student-athletes to reach out to boosters, program supporters and lifelong fans, thanking them for their contributions along the way.

For Rose, everything and everyone matters, especially when it comes to the big picture at Penn State.

From speaking engagements around the country or appearances throughout campus, Rose is quick to attend when it fits his schedule, which fills up quickly in the fall in addition to his ethics and coaching class, which makes him the only remaining head coach on campus with a teaching course.

With each passing year, sure there have been chances for Rose to go elsewhere, to change or move on, but he prefers to stay right where he’s at, because like the small tattoo etched on the inside of his left wrist says, “life is good.”