What does it take to be a great coach?

Obviously, a coach has to have a certain set of skills. Certainly, it cannot be as simple as showing up to practice and telling young men and women how to perform. There is no guarantee that athletes are going to react well to that kind of thing. But then what does it take?

Does it require a background in the sport? Is a paternal relationship between athletes and their coaches necessary? Is there a way to make each day of the season hold just as much meaning as the last?

For Sue Novitsky, head coach of Illinois’ swimming and diving team, it has required a variety of traits, notably consisting of intelligence, perseverance and a strong heart, to want the best for her swimmers, both as athletes and people.

Kathleen Novitsky, Sue’s mother, said her daughter’s history with water dates back to when Sue was 2 years old, wanting to jump into the canal at her grandparents’ house off of Lake St. Clair near the Detroit suburbs.

“My parents assumed that one day someone was going to fall into the lake. Therefore, Sue and I were going to learn how to swim,” Thomas Novitsky, her brother, said. “Yes, the swimming lessons paid off, and she did fall in, swam to the ladder and got out of the water without panic.”

Novitsky’s swimming career started when her mother enrolled her in swimming lessons at the local YMCA. Novitsky said competition did not come until she was nearly 9, but when she tried it and really liked it, she kept on working hard over the years.

This carried into her career in high school and then in college, where she became a two-time Division II All-American swimmer at Oakland University in Michigan.

It was at Oakland from 1988-91, while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, that Novitsky found higher inspiration in her sport from her head coach, Tracy Huth, who hired her as a student assistant coach.

“Smartest decision I ever made,” Huth said. “I knew she was going to be able to help out, but she was really just pretty phenomenal. … Sometimes it was a little scary to have her around because she was so smart.”

Knowing Novitsky’s intelligence, Huth said he knew there were many things she could have done with her life. But he knew early on that she had the coaching bug. She would break things down for him and the team in ways she was never asked, taking in all she could like a sponge and studying the sport as best she could.

“I would describe her as that servant leader,” Huth said. “She’s not afraid to do things for other people but, at the same time, she does it with some unbelievable leadership qualities, and I think that’s all just a testament to her character, which I don’t think she ever labors on. Her character is second to none.”

After leaving Oakland in 1991 and going on to obtain her master’s in kinesiology at the University of Michigan, there was still a big question in Novitsky’s life that needed an answer: What was she going to do with the rest of her life?

Traveling 343 miles away from her home and leaving behind her family, Novitsky came to the University of Illinois in hopes that more schooling would be the answer. She taught a few kinesiology courses in her free time but still strived for more.

When she took a step back and experienced the university community around her, she found her way back into the swimming world, this time as a volunteer assistant coach in 1994, which led to an assistant coaching position in 1997. She was eventually named the program’s fifth head coach in August 2000.

Novitsky was successful from the start, as three Illini qualified for the NCAA Championships in her first season. One year later, Novitsky’s coaching aided in senior Jessica Aveyard advancing to the semifinals in the 200 back at the FINA World Swimming Championships in Fukuoka, Japan.

Refusing complacency, Novitsky said she applied Huth’s teachings of helping swimmers become real students of the sport. Through constructing her own coaching methods, she became the smart, driven leader the influential figures in her early life believed she would become.

One of Novitsky’s most notorious methods in training her swimmers has been the process of building a base for them so details can be implemented and fine-tuned until swimmers have unlocked their greatest potential.

Her life reflects her own coaching techniques, as she has said she constantly is looking for ways to make herself and her team better.

“I personally love working with Sue,” graduate assistant athletic trainer Chase Rogowski said, having only been with the team since August. “Not only (does she) write good practice plans but she looks at some of the exercise physiology mechanisms and really puts science of exercise behind the practice plans for the girls.”

Rogowski also said Novitsky is a strong-willed person when it comes to her close relationship between Sue and her assistant head coach Steve Farnau. And Novitsky, Rogowski said, is definitely the one wearing the pants.

“At the end of the year banquets, (Sue) always talks about how hard working I am,” Illinois diving coach Chris Waters said. “And I don’t know how she can say that when she’s put in literally double the hours as me and spends more time either in the office or on stuff related to this team than I even dream about.”

Novitsky’s career is not entirely centered on her conviction as an instructor. It is also established by her resolve as a coach — one that compels her to help her swimmers reach their goals while serving as a maternal figure.

Both junior Courtney Pope and sophomore Alison Meng agree Sue shows her feelings for them as she grows emotionally invested in their performances each time. Pope said if Novitsky ever gets frustrated with her swimmers, it’s because she wants the best for them.

“At the end of (my freshman) season, I had outside problems, and I literally felt like I could go to her and just cry my eyes out to her,” junior Alyssa Toland said.

Toland added that Novitsky is the type of person who will take her swimmers in and tell them just how great they are. She said that sometimes they need that person like their mom that they can go to with anything.

It all comes down to a basic organization of thoughts when she is balancing her coaching life with her personal life. Novitsky said one of the biggest things she has learned is to find time outside of swimming, whether it would be to work out or catch on extra hours of sleep.

Still, Novitsky’s tenacity prevails as all of these attributes are at work as she tries to raise the team to new heights this season.

So far this year, the Illini have broken six pool records, set two school records, sent eight swimmers to the 2012 AT&T Winter National Championships and taken second place in the annual Northwestern Invitational.

“The thing I like about coaching the most is seeing people achieve their goals and helping them realize how hard they can actually work,” Novitsky said. “To see that smile on their face when they turn around and see their time, that’s really gratifying.”

Novitsky no longer may be the same person on the outside who wanted so eagerly to jump into Lake St. Clair, but she is still very much the same person on the inside.

J.J. can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @TheWilson9287.