The head coach job I mentioned last week hearing rumor about being filled has indeed now been. That was Hartford. Interestingly, they didn’t go for a female candidate as I’d heard suggested they wanted. That’s a tough job, though. As I understand it from my contacts in the region, the prior coach left because of the lack of resources. The new coach has good names on his resume from assistant coaching. I can’t help but wonder how he’s going to deal with things in this much less well supported program. I applied somewhat out of curiosity myself. Never heard anything from them, though.
In other rejection news, I heard at the HP Clinic that the East Tennessee State assistant job is/will be filled (by a former player). Haven’t seen anything posted officially. Also saw that the George Mason head job was finally filled. To this point I haven’t found all that much fault with the selections made, but in this case I have to ask the question why I wasn’t even contacted. The new coach has zero head coaching experience and her four years as a Division I assistant were spread across three different programs. I’m not suggesting she may not end up being a perfectly good coach for the program, but her qualifications beg the question why someone with more experience wasn’t at least contacted.
After seeing that news, I reached out to one of my former coaching bosses. She made the observation that my time away from US volleyball and the fact that I’m a male aren’t helping me, which I’ve known would be the case. She suggested I might need to go the assistant route – which I’ve obviously been doing – or going Division III, which I haven’t done yet.
I also had another head coach I worked under suggest people might be afraid of me because of the PhD thing. I’ve definitely wondered about that. He also expressed the idea that going after a head job would be difficult not coming from a major program in the US and that women seem to be favored. He also asked “Are you sure you want to do this?” 🙂
The head coach job at another lower level program in the Northeast has opened up that I’ve applied for. It’s in a difficult competitive situation in that basically there’s one dominant team in that conference, with everyone else playing for second. If I were to go for it I would do so from the perspective of a potential stepping stone and/or being in a position to help develop volleyball in the region.
I also put in for another Division I head coaching job in a better part of the country. It’s one I initially thought not to go after, but I’ve since figured “Why not?” I’ve applied for a handful of DI assistant jobs as well. I’m now up over 40 jobs applied for since things started.
I emailed the A.D. of a couple of the schools I applied to earlier just to follow-up and reiterate my interest in those jobs and will do the same with a few others, and some head coaches as well.
In other interesting news, word has it one of the schools I submitted for a head position at has sent out “thanks, but no thanks” notes a couple weeks ago. I didn’t get one, suggesting I passed at least the first cut. I haven’t heard anything beyond that, though, which implies I’m not near the top of the list.
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