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Troy University head volleyball coach Josh Lauer spoke to the Troy Rotary Club about leadership.

Lauer is in his eighth season at the helm of the Trojan volleyball program. Overall, Laurer entered the season with a 107-99 record and is coming off the best conference season in program history. In 2023, Troy started 1-8 but went on an 11 match winning streak and ended the season at 15-13 with 12 wins in Sun Belt matches. It was also Troy’s fifth consecutive winning season, which was a first in the program’s history.

Lauer played football at Washington University-St. Louis and he began his coaching career in club volleyball and spent four seasons as the head coach at Missouri-St. Louis. Lauer had assistant volleyball coaching stints at Alabama, Georgia and then joined Troy University as its head volleyball coach.

Lauer told Rotarians that every person has life experiences and stories they can put back into the community, the same way coaches put those experiences and stories to use in building a successful sports program.

Laurer said he had been exposed to a wide variety of leadership styles in his career – including Nick Saban, Kirby Smart, Mark Richt, Neal Brown, Jon Sumrall and Gerard Parker.

“The way I want to encourage and serve is through the Jesus leadership model,” Laure told Rotarians.

He went on to explain that Jesus recruited his disciples from around the region, similar to the way coaches recruit players. The thing in common was recruiting people of high character. Once the team was built, Jesus spent time building real relationships with his disciples. Overall, Jesus had a vision for his team so everyone knew what they were working towards. Then they went on a journey together and Jesus walked with them as they engaged all kinds of people.

Laurer said Rotarians and community leaders could use that same approach to build a better community.

“Troy is full of good people with high character,” Lauer said. “If you don’t have good people, you won’t have good results.”