Bozeman, Mont. – University of Providence vice president of student engagement Dave Gantt's 1998 team Montana State volleyball was named the best team in Montana State volleyball program history. His 1998 team finished with a 21-6 record, going 11-5 in conference.

Gantt's teams have been widely recognized in the Top 10 list, with six of his teams being recognized in the top 10. His 2000 and 2002 teams were listed as a tie for the second-best team, and his 1999 team was listed as the third best team. His 1997 team was ranked 5^th, while his 1996 was ranked 8^th. The list was compiled by longtime Bobcat director of communications Tom Schulz.

"Being there as the head coach for nine years and to have five of the top teams in this deal that Tom is doing is such an honor," Gantt said. "There are a lot of memories that start to surface about some of those trips."

Gantt left the program as the head coach in 2004 with the winningest record in program history at 159-96. When taking the job in 1994, he never imagined his tenure would be filled with this much success.

"If you're doing this for the right reasons, you don't think about the accolades," he said. "You're so deeply involved in the process of improving. You're so into it, trying to do the little things on the list of attitudes, habits and skills that you're trying to teach. The performance outcomes are what they are, but they're affected by those attitudes, those habits and the skills that we teach them. It's not until you look back on it and reflect do those things mean as much to you as they maybe could of at the time."

One thing that was certain though; the games were popular in Bozeman. When Gantt took the healm, he estimates that around 400 showed up to volleyball matches. In his final year, that probably rose to 1,200 fans. And in the historic rivalry with the Montana Grizzlies, over 6,500 people showed up.

"The biggest takeaway is that we went from a small program in a smaller conference and were an afterthought basically to everyone in that field house. The growth of the program I think can be summed up right there."

"The Griz/Bobcat rivalry has fewer people than Cal/Stanford, Oregon/Oregon State or Michigan/Ohio State," Gantt continued. "But there's no less enthusiasm per person. Some people are way into it. Those games got intense."

Gantt left the program in 2004 to move into administration. This presented a new challenge for Gantt, who was entering a whole new job description. With new roles and responsibilities, it was a whirlwind of a first year. However he soon learned a secret weapon: there was a lot of parallels between coaching and administration.

"If you look at coaching period, it's always been about growing people and skill sets," Gantt said. "Sports has performance outcomes, which is applicable to everything. Somewhere along the line, a real job is going to ask you to have a performance outcome. If it's worth doing, there should be a performance outcome so you can measure that and have some analytics to make assessments and go forward. That to me is a process that is solid across any pursuit. You just have to tailor it to the specifics of the pursuit."

Gantt took these lessons when he was named the Vice President for Athletics at the University of Providence in 2016. Arunas Duda, the head volleyball coach, was on the hiring committee that selected. Four years later, he reflects on the impact Gantt has had.  

"He came into UP and sat back and listened for awhile," Duda said. "He figured out what needed to be done. He had a plan in mind. Without incorporating everyone else, constantly made changes to enact his vision. After three or four years, you look back and see all positive changes we've made, it's because he came in and had this amazing plan in place. As an administrator, I think he's one of the best I've ever worked with."

Gantt has a simple philosophy that he uses as an administrator:  the great ones adjust. He believes higher education in general needs to be more adaptable to change.

"If you want to hold on the past, you're going to be archaic," he said. "The past gets here sooner and sooner now with the way things are going. You're going to get run over by change if you're not keeping up with it. Some of the concepts are timeless. The mechanisms that we use to make decisions and have readily-available information, those are changing rapidly."

Despite the changes, Gantt will always lean on his experience as a coach.

"When I sit down with people and talk with them, my coaching hat goes on immediately because I'm back in that world when it's relational," Gantt said. "It's my default response. But I'm adjusting."