BOZEMAN, Mont. – The recognition keeps piling on for Vice President of Student Engagement Dave Gantt.

A week after Gantt's 1999 Montana State Bobcats volleyball team was recognized as the 3^rd best team in program history by Bobcat director of communications Tom Schulz. Gantt's 2000 and 2002 teams were named as a tie for second.

Of the ten Bobcat teams that have been released so far (the top team will be announced next Friday), Gantt has been the head coach of five of them. His 1997 team was ranked 5^th and his 1996 team was ranked 8^th.

"I'm honored to be recognized like this," Gantt said. "I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunities that I've had. Those were not extended lightly and I have certainly have met some great people in the world of athletics. Those relationships are always treasured."

Gantt's 2000 team finished 21-8 with a 10-6 conference record and a Big Sky Tournament appearance. The 2002 team finished 21-10 with a 10-4 conference record, with the season ending in a semi-final loss to Sacramento State in the Big Sky Championship. Gantt, who moved into administration in 2004, finished with a career record of 159-96.

Gantt took over as the head of the Bobcat program in 1994, a year after the team finished 5-27. His first order of business was to change the culture. By the time the 2000 season rolled around, every student-athlete in his program was aware of the new expectations.

"It wasn't getting to the tournament anymore," Gantt said. "It was playing for seeding. That's different. You're not just playing to try to get to the tournament, because now you have. You're not playing just to experience the event, because now you have. Now we're playing for seeding so we can do something while we're there."

To prepare the team to compete at the conference championships, Gantt would routinely schedule matches against Pac-12 schools. The matches were highly competitive; so much so that Gantt struggled to schedule regular season games with them.

"Behind the scenes, we gained a lot of credibility in the region," Gantt said. "We couldn't schedule a regular-season schedule with the Pac-12. They wouldn't do it. They couldn't afford to take a loss. We were that competitive."

Gantt didn't let that stop him. Determined to schedule quality competition, Gantt scheduled road trips against some of the top teams in the country. The Bobcats traveled to Wake Forest, West Virginia and Minnesota to play tournaments against top-notch competition.

"I like to reflect on how successful we were at a national level outside of our conference," Gantt said. "That is a testament to how good Sacramento State and Eastern Washington and us were in the conference that we had that sort of respect. We were all right there."

The trips also allowed a chance for the team to develop chemistry with each other. Gantt used the trips to expand on the relationships with his players and coaching staff, and the players themselves developed lifelong memories. 

"There were so many stories and so many memories," Gantt said. "Some of them I can't tell you. We can't expose some of the craziness. We just had some great kids."

The team was business first forever. As the culture evolved, Gantt reiterated to his team about the unique mental toughness that the sport of volleyball requires.

"As the culture got better and stabilized, the peace that we held our hat on is there's no time clock in volleyball," he said. "You've got to play right up until the last point. We just developed more and more depth of our grit to hang in there. We packed a lunch, cause it was going to be awhile and we're not going away easy. We had this fighting spirit that got a little better every year. We got kids who liked to fight, period."

Gantt's general philosophy can be attributed to three key characteristics: attitude, habits and skills. He wanted his players to not only be successful on the court, but off the court as well.

 "I left a lot of myself there and I think a lot of those kids have a lot of those good traits," Gantt said. "Everyone there is successful at something. They're all doing what they want to do and having success at it. That's a pretty good track record."

This is part 2 of a three-part series on Gantt's tenure as the head coach of the Montana State Bobcats. You can read Part 1 here. Part 3 will release next Friday.

Keep up with Tom' Top 10, released every Friday at MSUBobcats.com