Wanted to touch briefly on the Women's volleyball team. It is a smaller sport BUT we may have found something. Last year with a first year coach, ASU went 28-7 and made it to the Sweet 16 in his first year. wow. Very impressive. The program was pretty bare when he got here. This year, they are highly ranked (14th) and are 8-1. We are 36-8 since coach J.J. Van Niel took over last year. That is quite impressive. Their only loss this year was at top 4 program Nebraska. ASU seemed a little intimated being there as they had an unusual amount of unforced service errors and also the Cornhuskers had their 320th plus straight sellout so a big factor as well. Remember that last year Nebraska played outdoors at the football stadium and got 92,000 fans to go to the game and break the attendance record. In any case, our coach looks to be serious high end. We need to make sure we take care of him and not do what we did with Softball and Men's swimming, where we let title coaches leave. Quality coaches are hard to find as evidenced by what happened in Softball and after CTT left in women's basketball. You literally go from being a quality program to bottom feeder just like that. Rayray didn't even try to work with Tricia Ford on a salary that would tempt her to stay yet two weeks later he got a nice sweet $2.1M bonus for ASU academic achievement. Fortunately, his horrible leadership is gone and we'll hope that Rossini recognizes what he has here and does the right thing. These are the coaches we need to put enough resources in to hold onto. I realize Volleyball isn't a money maker and is dwarfed by Football and Basketball, I get that, BUT, if you have these other programs and you get a high end coach, we need to do what we can to keep them. I remember in my younger days when we were in the top 10-20 of the Sears Director Cup standings for overall program success. Would be nice to get back there at some point. In any case, shout out to coach Van Niel for getting this going so quickly.
#14 Volleyball Team and J.J. Van Niel
- Thread starter Firebird7
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