From Australia to Pocatello with Malta in between: Ashleigh van Vliet returns to Idaho State to coach

Ashleigh van Vliet was the first recruit for Idaho State head coach Seton Sobolewski. She then helped lead the Bengals to the Big Sky championship and NCAA Tournament in 2012 and a WNIT bid as a senior. She is now back on campus to begin her first season as an assistant coach.

But her playing career stretched far beyond Pocatello. The Australian competed in England, France and Malta and played for the Maltese national team, which competes in FIBA Division C and the Games of the Small States of Europe every two years.

van Vliet returned to the United States and coached at the high school and AAU levels before returning to ISU.

She recently spoke with Mid-Major Madness’ Ian Sacks. Below is their conversation:

Ian Sacks: What makes Idaho State so special? First, to bring you there as a player and now to bring you back as a coach?

Ashleigh van Vliet: Going through the recruiting process, many, many, many years ago, obviously it was scary for myself being in Australia. And then just kind of trusting the coaches and the process to move my whole life overseas. I just remember having really great conversations with Coach Sobolewski and the assistants at the time.

I was really lucky in Australia. One of my coaches was actually from Texas, so she knew Coach Sobolewski. Having someone kind of on the inside and knowing Coach was super helpful. With some of the conversations that we had, I just really liked what they had to say. I was really just looking for an adventure.

I joke about it now, but I remember telling my coach in Australia, I don’t care where I go, I want to go somewhere warm. And he said how’s Idaho? I said I don’t know anything about it, but it sounds great.

From the moment I got on campus, the girls were great. I’ve made some amazing friendships over the years that I played and beyond. The coaching staff was awesome and really helped me settle.

I was really lucky. My freshman year, we actually had a senior from Romania. And so just having that international connection, she really mentored me and took me under her wing.

And then the community here. As someone not from America, it was a little intimidating at first, but I just felt like the community here at Pocatello really embraced me. They have a fantastic grandparents program. So, after games, a lot of the girls would go and talk to family because their family would come down to the games. But I didn’t obviously have my family every game, but I just remember the community really embraced me, and I always had someone to talk to after a game. So, I have fantastic memories of being a player here.

When the opportunity kind of came back around to be a coach, I didn’t really even have to think about it. Even though I’m not from Pocatello, it feels like a home away from home.

IS: How has the school and the program and the campus grown and changed from the time you stepped on campus as a freshman to now?

AVV: My husband was a football player here. So, we’re both really familiar with the athletics program, and we always kind of laugh. It’s new, but familiar. Obviously, they’ve done some fantastic upgrades with a lot of the facilities, which is awesome to see. But then it’s still Pocatello. It’s still the same campus. It’s still a pretty cozy vibe, I would say.

I’m pretty lucky as a new coach. Obviously, there’s a lot of things that I need to learn, but I’m lucky in the situation that I don’t have to learn a brand-new campus. I already know where a lot of the facilities are and a lot of the things are. It’s nice to see how much it’s grown and how much of an input people have really poured back into the school.

For me, I adored playing here because it was big, but it wasn’t too big and overwhelming.

IS: That’s a great blend there of that middle size. You mentioned Coach Sobolewski in your first answer. What’s your relationship with Coach?

AVV: He and I have always had a really great relationship. I know as a player, he was exactly what I needed at the right time. He pushed me. He challenged me. I credit him for my career after ISU. He really believed in me, the player. He pushed me to be more than that stereotypical post, back to the basket. He really believed in my skills and ability and developed them.

During the time that I was here, he and I had multiple conversations about what does my career look like playing-wise and then what does it look like beyond playing. He and I had a lot of conversations about me getting into college coaching. It’s something we talked about multiple times.

I always joke the timing just was never right. There were some opportunities to coach, but I was still playing at the time, and so I wanted to continue playing. And then I have a four-year-old son. So, it was kind of right around the time that I just had my son. So, the timing just didn’t really work. But then when this next opportunity popped up, it was just perfect timing.

IS: That was my next question. Did you ever envision yourself getting into coaching?

AVV: Prior to coming to the college basketball scene, no. I think teaching or something along that line, maybe like a PE teacher. That’s pretty standard for basketball players in Australia. Usually, you go and teach high school PE or something.

And then I know for myself, when I came to college, I just fell in love with just the whole atmosphere. It’s an amazing dynamic. Certainly, when I played, it was a different landscape than it is today. But I really loved the environment and the atmosphere. And so, I would say probably my junior or senior year, it was kind of a vision that I was seeing for myself getting back into coaching.

Then, we were overseas. We were in Europe. I was playing, and as I said, I just had my son. We knew that we kind of wanted to be closer to family. My husband’s family is from America, and then obviously my family is from Australia. We were really kind of debating about where the best fit for our family was going to be. I think just the amazing opportunities in college coaching really drew us back to the States.

IS: I wanted to ask you to expand more on your post-ISU playing career. Your travels have taken you far and wide and all over the globe. What have been some of the best parts of all of those experiences?

AVV: I think it was the surprisingness of it. I played kind of semi-professionally. It’s comparable to college. You play in a university league in England. I never envisioned myself even traveling to England. It looked like a cool place, but I never had a desire to travel there.

Then my playing career took me to France. And I always joke that I took high school French just as a subject to take and never thought I’d actually use it. It came kind of in handy, I guess.

For me, the most surprising place we lived was Poland. It’s probably one of my favorite places that I’ve lived in. Probably because I had such a stereotype of Poland. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. But it ended up being just a beautiful city we lived in.

It was awesome in terms of living in Central Europe. We spent Christmases in Germany. We went to Latvia, Brussels. We traveled all over Europe just because we were so centralized to everything.

I kind of finished my career in Malta, which is special for me because my dad was born in Malta, and so I’m actually half Maltese. I played with the national team since 2009. I always got an opportunity to go for national team camps, but I never got a chance to live there and fully enjoy the culture.

That’s an amazing Mediterranean island. I remember we spent Christmases on the beach, which is a pretty cool experience.

IS: That sounds amazing. Christmas on the beach sounds just ideal. I’m someone who loves warm weather, so that sounds amazing. But you led right into the next thing that I wanted to ask. Tell people more about Malta and what that experience was like playing on the national team.

AVV: I always kind of joke. I knew my dad was Maltese. I didn’t really know what that meant. I remember looking it up one day on my computer and thinking, ‘oh man, there’s some dirt on my screen.’ And realizing that’s the island of Malta. It’s teeny tiny. I looked it up once, I think 17 miles north to south. So, it’s a little speck of an island.

My dad was born there, and then he moved back to Australia. I was lucky enough. I had somebody in Malta reach out and say, ‘hey, we’re with the national team. Would you want to come and do a training camp and potentially play?’ At the time I thought, ‘well, this can’t be real. It’s a little too good to be true.’

My father and I went, and that was a really special moment. It was the first time my dad had been back in 40 years. Just getting to experience that with him was really awesome.

I was lucky enough to make the team. I played from 2009 to 2023. Obviously with COVID and some small pauses in there just because of all of that. It was an amazing experience. I got to travel to some countries that ordinarily I would have never gone to: Montenegro, Armenia, Macedonia, some of the lesser-traveled places.

It was a fantastic opportunity to play. I was 18 when I played in the first national team competition. As a little 18-year-old, I’m playing against grown women, professional athletes. That was really, really fun and special. It challenged me. It was also fantastic because it was during the summer. So, when I was playing college, I was getting to do a full-blown training camp. I was doing competitions. It really kept me sharp during my college career.

The last competition I competed in was 2023. And that was kind of a special one because Malta actually hosted the tournament. They hadn’t hosted, I think, since 2002. That was a really nice way to kind of finish my career in front of a lot of friends and family. My husband’s family all came to watch. And having my son there, being able to watch his mom play was pretty special.

IS: Do you know roughly how many countries you’ve traveled to?

AVV: I did the math once. I want to say, 20, maybe 25, somewhere in there. I played for a little over 10 years. Every year we got to travel to a different place. And then living in Poland, my husband and I really tried to take advantage of I mean you can jump on a bus [and go somewhere easily]. For our honeymoon, we jumped on a bus and drove 10 hours to Budapest for I think $20.

IS: Amazing. How do you try to blend seeing the game from so many different styles from the international scene in your coaching style?

AVV: That’s a really good point because I’ve been lucky enough to play in a lot of different programs and systems and styles. I do think I just have an advantage having played for Coach Sobolewski. I know his style of how he wants things done and how he executes things. So, from that standpoint, I feel like I’ll be able to, as the word says, assist him because I know his vision. I know what it looks like when it’s done correctly.

Blending my experience, I was pretty fortunate enough. I got to play the gambit of positions. I started as a forward at ISU. Then, I actually finished my career as a point guard.

I don’t know how successful I was, but I was put in that position. So, I think I have an appreciation for all the positions and how integral they all work towards one another. I think in college I kind of was very single-minded. I was a post, and this is how post things are done. I now have a greater understanding of how all the positions function together.

My biggest thing is mentoring the girls. For myself, when you get to college, physically, everyone can do all the skills, but there’s a huge mental aspect to playing basketball.

In the last couple years with the University has done a great job of really tapping into that mental side of it. When I was coaching high school, I saw myself kind of in that mom role, putting my arm around someone and saying ‘hey, we’re good. Next play.’ Or whatever it needed to be.

I’m excited to see how I can blend my experience and my knowledge into the program.

IS: It’s really interesting how you started more as a power forward and transitioned more into a point guard role. It seems like you were maybe one of the forerunners of what we’re seeing in today’s game, where it seems a lot more positionless and that players have the skills of both guards and post players. So many times you see a post stepping out and shooting a three. How do you feel like your experience can help with that?

AVV: I think it’s awesome. I would say that I was very much pigeonholed growing up into ‘okay, you’re big. You go stand in the post.’ Coach Sobolewski was probably one of those first coaches that said, ‘no, you can step out. You can shoot. You can dribble.’ He really pushed and challenged me to develop that side of my game.

I think it’s great. I coached club before this, and I was a really big proponent of ‘you’re not just a guard. You’re not just a post. Everyone needs to do all the skills.’ That’s what’s really great about Coach Sobolewski’s the system and his style of play. It’s very fluid. There’s no set position. Everyone’s kind of expected to handle the ball, to shoot, to drive, to kind of all contribute. There’s none of that traditional one through five. It’s a pretty fluid offense.

IS: You mentioned the mentorship side of coaching. What are a couple of skills or life lessons that you look to instill in your players?

AVV: I think I have a really great perspective. I’ve kind of done a lot of things in my career. And so just giving the girls perspective that maybe a bad play or a bad game, it’s not the end of the world. There’s a lot more to it. It’s not just that one single play.

That’s a really big thing I see, especially in youth athletics. Players get a little bit stuck on executing perfectly. We’re trying to play a perfect game in an imperfect game, and it’s never going to really work.

Just instilling that kind of resilience of, ‘hey, we might make a mistake, but it’s what we do after it that’s really, really important.’

The other thing would be, when I came and watched a couple games last year, would just be camaraderie. Which I believe the culture at ISU has already instilled. Some of the best teams I played on is because we didn’t necessarily have to be friends off the court, but we had that great relationship and that respect for each other. It goes a long way.

So, just in terms of me being a mentor, just trying to help get that relationship going between all the players and just making it a really cohesive program.

IS: Coach, we touched on so many different things. Anything else you can think of?

AVV: I’m excited for this new opportunity. It’s a lot of learning and a lot of new skills that I’m developing, but I’m just really grateful for this. I’m really excited to see how the program grows and develops from here and how I can kind of help it.