Court to Classroom Episode I: Coach Grieb

Much of the Sacred Heart community has encountered Coach Grieb in the classroom and on the field and easily noticed his passion and deep relationship with sports. Growing up with three brothers, Grieb played basketball, baseball, and football from eight years old through high school, but he knew early on that football was his favorite after making friends with a tackle football player early on in life. He says that sports mainly taught him “how to be resilient,” and “allow [him] to work on [himself]self,” as he learned later in his football career.
After high school, Grieb went on to play at UC Davis, where he started for two and a half years and became a finalist for the Division II Player of the Year Award during his senior year. Due to the team’s success in playoffs his senior year, he was given a lot of exposure that allowed him to have a few tryouts with several professional teams following his college career. He decided to play Arena Football in Anaheim, while simultaneously doing a PhD program at UCLA. After a rough rookie season, because of injury and poor team chemistry, Grieb decided that he “wasn’t going to continue playing the game” after that. In comparing his experience in Anaheim with that of Davis, he recalled how his Davis team gave their all every day, because they wanted to be good, they wanted to win, and they were willing to work hard — because they had been overlooked for scholarships by some other schools.
The winter of ‘98 was a turning point for Grieb. While in his molecular biology lab at UCLA, he got a call from a coach in NFL Europe, which led him to play in Scotland. He recalls it as “one of the best experiences of [his] life.” He appreciated the new environment, the high level, and the ability to bring the game to a different part of the world that hadn’t had a chance to appreciate it yet.
When he came back, he had a few more tryouts with professional teams in the US and ultimately got talked into playing Arena Football once again in San Jose. He met some amazing people, and he said that the coach who they’d brought in from Santa Clara University “really made the difference” from his prior experience in Anaheim.
From being on three different teams in three years, Grieb said something valuable he learned was that “if you’re going to be successful, you have to stay in one place,” especially as a quarterback. The system grows with and around you, so have to stay with one coach and one system and make it the very best you can if you want any chance to be good. He said that he had a good feeling about the SaberCats and made the decision to stay.
After not starting his first season, he began teaching and coaching simultaneously in the Bay Area. The following year, his team went 11-0 and went to the playoffs. Following this, Grieb was given a solid chance to be on the Kansas City Chiefs two quarters into graduate school at Stanford, but ultimately decided not to go because of uncertainty about whether he would be just a “camp arm,” or actually make the team following training camp. Additionally, because he didn’t want to give up his master’s degree, he decided to go back to the SaberCats, with whom he went on to win three championships with “some of the best people [he’s] known in his life.”
Grieb was later drawn to Sacred Heart’s football program when his playing career ended and he became a coach at Menlo College — not only because of the facilities and the program, but also because he was “really impressed” by the maturity of the players, and could tell that it was a really “special place.” Grieb applauds Sacred Heart students for their intelligence and ability to succeed, but also recognizes that there are many times when “you have to come up against failure.” He teaches that the psychology in sports doesn’t just stay within the field, but it’s applicable everywhere, like in the classroom. When it’s over, the game’s ended, and you’ve lost, the question turns to how you react, move on, and come back with confidence to continue doing what you’re doing.
With the Sacred Heart football program for the past eight years, Grieb has aimed to cultivate that same sense of “team and connection” that he had fallen in love with at Davis. He said, at Davis, he never was treated like he was “less than,” but like a person with a lot of respect, from both teammates and coaches. Grieb says that “the way your coaches talk to you can be so empowering,” so, creating the kind of culture centered around positivity and supporting one another where you feel like it’s special and has a place for you is something he’s always tried to bring to Sacred Heart.