Penn volleyball has yet another head coaching search on its hands after Katie Schumacher-Cawley took an assistant job at Penn State following just one year with the Quakers. // Photo from Penn Athletics
Penn volleyball had one head coach for 19 years, but will open the 2018 campaign with its third coach in three seasons.
After just one season at the helm of the Red and Blue, coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley is leaving the program to take an assistant coaching job with perennial powerhouse Penn State, sources told the Daily Pennsylvanian. The highly popular Schumacher-Cawley, herself an alumnus of Penn State volleyball who was hired in February 2017, told the team about her departure in a meeting on Thursday morning.
"It was pretty tough," the coach said. "I really have enjoyed my time here at Penn, as short as it's been. I enjoy this team, this group, from the seniors down to the freshmen, it's been great, it's been such a wonderful university to be a part of, and that's because of the girls on the team."
The Quakers went 12-11, including 7-7 in Ivy League play, in Schumacher-Cawley's first season as longtime coach Kerry Carr's successor following Carr's resignation in December of 2016. With six seniors graduating from the 2017 team after zero players graduated from the 2016 roster, the 2018 squad will once again need to adjust to a new coach while this time adjusting to a vastly changed roster as well.
The Nittany Lions, who have been led by head coach Russ Rose since 1979, will add Schumacher-Cawley's coaching talents to a team which is coming off a Final Four appearance and has won six national championships in the last 11 years.
Schumacher-Cawley cited the opportunity to coach her alma mater and work for her own former coach as an opportunity that was too great to pass up.
"I'm honored to go back there, and to work with the school that I played for in a different role now, and continue the tradition that they have, and find the best players in the country that we can."
This story will be updated.
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