FC: PSU WVBALL hires new coach….
- Thread starter Midnighter
- Start date
“After an extensive national search, we are thrilled to have Katie Schumacher-Cawley named as the third head coach in Penn State Women's Volleyball history," said Penn State Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Sandy Barbour. "Katie has a deep connection with the Penn State program as both an All-American and National Champion student-athlete and assistant coach.”
Assuming the rumors are true, she wasn’t the first choice. I’d also like to think we wouldn’t have had so many players transfer out if she was expected to be the next coach. If she was the favorite and they transferred anyway, that’s a problem. Regardless, hopefully she hits the ground running. She has a lot of recruiting ahead of her.
Congrats to Katie. Our run of dominance kind of started with her. Had considerable success as the head coach at UIC. Nice to keep the Chicago pipeline open.
Sorry. Assumption since she had been an assistant here for a few years. I’ll edit.
Recruiting is national and even international, but ties in b1g country (Midwest) can’t be a bad thing.
Yeah, the landscape has changed dramatically the last decade or so. Nebraska joining the conference and the rise of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and others (to include Pitt) has made recruiting much more difficult. It looks like the sport is growing in popularity too. Still, Penn State should be an attractive school for top talent but I don't know what the younger players thinking these days.
I did a little research. From the gopsusports.com article:
“Schumacher-Cawley has nine years of experience as a head coach on her resume, totaling 125 wins over eight seasons at UIC and one season at Penn. She spent 14 seasons with the Flames, serving six years as an assistant before taking over head coaching duties in 2009. She led the 2012 team to the Horizon League title match for the first time in six years and guided the 2012 squad to the best start in program history with 10 consecutive wins to open the season. Overall, she oversaw a Flames team which earned two Horizon League Player of the Year honors and 11 All-Horizon League accolades. Her 113 wins are the third-most in program history.”
Hopefully she can translate that success and even go farther on a bigger stage.
“Schumacher-Cawley has nine years of experience as a head coach on her resume, totaling 125 wins over eight seasons at UIC and one season at Penn. She spent 14 seasons with the Flames, serving six years as an assistant before taking over head coaching duties in 2009. She led the 2012 team to the Horizon League title match for the first time in six years and guided the 2012 squad to the best start in program history with 10 consecutive wins to open the season. Overall, she oversaw a Flames team which earned two Horizon League Player of the Year honors and 11 All-Horizon League accolades. Her 113 wins are the third-most in program history.”
Hopefully she can translate that success and even go farther on a bigger stage.
In the WVball thread it seemed like PSU was poised to take Pitt's HC (Fisher) but he backed out at the last moment and leveraged the PSU interest into a new deal with Pitt.
One was that PSU was going to hire pitt’s coach. Then pitt announced a new contract for him. If the rumor was true, then it appears that he used PSU for leverage.
Why do PSU press releases always seem to include "After an extensive national search.....?" No reflection on Schumacher-Cawley, who I hope is a smashing success. Larry the Fish must think that everyone is an idiot. I guess he has reason.
I am afraid you are correct after the embarrassment of leaking an announcement and then being played by Fisher along with the rumors of being flat out turned down by others this seems to be I promised a coach by the start of semester so her she is
I don’t know that they necessarily were turned down by Salima, but clearly Fisher played the game for himself. The key for Katie as in all collegiate sports now is going to be NIL money. She needs some boosters to step up financially to lure some players from the portal or to sign other recruits. With all of Nebraska’s consecutive sell outs it’s going to be hard for Penn State to keep up with their volleyball payroll.
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Forget Nebraska for a while. Let's strive to be better than Ohio State, Pitt, Purdue, and other teams on the rise at first. If we ever get back to competing against Nebraska, Texas, Stanford, Wisconsin and Minnesota for players it will take a lot of effort and luck. We have a lot of work to do.
I agree. She may be terrific, and I hope she is. She should be given time to make her mark, but my confidence level in this hire is not very high. That said, my knowledge of the sport is limited so take this post with a grain of salt.
My point is that it will take a lot of NIL money. Womens volleyball is a professional sport and these players are looking for the cash. They want to get paid to play both in college and later on in European leagues. PSU needs to ante up or the Texas A t M teams will take over the sport. I remember talking to Russ Rose a few years ago and even then he was complaining about the private jets some of the other colleges had for their teams.
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I wish her the best. Replacing a legend won't be easy.
So Pitt of him? Or should I say Franklin of him?!
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Great individual, great family, and a great future ahead of her and PSU Womens Volleyball!
She should recruit good women volleyball players. I don’t understand the fixation on this board regarding having a female coach. There are many very successful female coaches in collegiate womens volleyball just as there are in basketball. Show some class. Get over it.
It was funny, earlier this year I was at Hiway West on a Saturday afternoon and coach RR. When I git home later on he was on TV coaching. I thought looks like coach is about to walk away. I know there is only so much prep you can do but it not a great optic
Well she’s been arriving at matches for several years as an assistant coach if you’ve paid any attention to this sport.Just wait until she arrives at a match wearing pants.
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