Wesmen women’s volleyball coach spiked

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This article was published 01/08/2019 (2497 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the first time in 24 years, the University of Winnipeg Wesmen women’s volleyball program has a new head coach.

But you’d never know it by looking at the program’s website or social media accounts, because no formal announcement was made to the public.

Longtime head coach Diane Scott was fired in June for reasons unknown to the Free Press. Scott has been replaced by 63-year-old Phil Hudson, who will serve as the team’s interim head coach.

Hudson worked at Dakota Collegiate as the physical education department’s head athletic director before retiring in 2018. He coached the boy’s team for 31 years — including this past season, despite being retired from teaching — and won five provincial titles. He also coached West Kildonan Collegiate to two provincial crowns in the 1980s. His son, Ryan, who played five years at McMaster University from 2005-2010, will take over Dakota’s varsity program after years of coaching their junior varsity team.

The U of W refused to comment on why Scott was let go.

“I’m not going to talk about that,” said Wesmen athletic director Dave Crook. “We don’t talk about human resources things.”

The Free Press attempted to contact Scott, but there was no response to an interview request.

While nobody is coming out and confirming the reason for the coaching change, it might have something to do with the team’s struggles in recent years. The Wesmen women’s team went 4-20 last season, which was actually its best record since the 2015-16 campaign, when the Wesmen were 8-16. Over the past three seasons, the Wesmen women have a combined record of 7-65.

But even when losses pile up, it’s rare to see coaches get fired at the U Sports level, at least in Manitoba. Larry McKay has been coaching the men’s volleyball team at the University of Winnipeg for nearly 30 years. At the University of Manitoba, Garth Pischke has been patrolling the sideline for the Bisons men’s volleyball squad for 39 years. Ken Bentley has been in charge of the Bisons women’s volleyball team for 34 years.

It’s the same story at Brandon University, as Lee Carter has been the only head coach of the Bobcats women’s volleyball program that started in 2005. On the men’s side, Grant Wilson started out as an assistant coach in 2005, but has been the head coach for the past seven seasons.

The long tenure of university volleyball coaches in the province is a big reason why Hudson has been on the outside for so long, even with the success he’s had.

“In Manitoba, there’s only six positions and the coaches are amazing that have been here,” Hudson said. “Opportunities don’t come up very often, so I’m pretty excited about the chance to coach an elite sport in Manitoba at the U Sports level.”

Hudson isn’t a complete stranger to coaching U Sports volleyball, as he took over the Bisons men’s volleyball team in 2007 when Pischke was on a sabbatical. And despite the fact he’s been coaching males for the majority of his career, Hudson also has experience coaching the women’s game, as he was an assistant coach with Team Canada’s women’s volleyball team in 2005.

Although Hudson has currently been tabbed as the interim head coach, he said he’d like to be the team’s permanent coach in the future. For right now, he’s not worried about it.

“Dave Crook just told me to move ahead as if I was coming back and we’ll see what happens,” he said. “And I think the attitude of the players is we’re just going to do the best we can for this year and then we’re going to see what happens. We’re going to plan for a longer period and we’ll play it by ear as it goes. We never talked about interim too much.

“I’m just looking forward to the challenge of giving the girls an experience on and off the court that promotes them as an athlete, a student and as young women.”

Coaching changes can often lead to players transferring to play elsewhere, but Crook said that hasn’t been the case, and the addition of Hudson has been well received by the players.

“That’s the risk you take sometimes. But for right now, we’ve retained all the student athletes from a year ago. All the recruits have stayed committed to the program and he’s brought back a couple athletes who participated in the program in the past, plus brought in some recruits,” Crook said.

“We feel the kids are really comfortable with him. I know he’s going to do a good job. We’ll see where it is and maybe he’ll be the person to lead our program in the future. I don’t know. The reason we wanted to put it off for a year is we wanted to make sure we got the best candidates, the best situation, so you know, we’re going to wait until it’s clear we know what we’re going to do and we’ll put out a big search.

We’ll go nationwide and hopefully we’ll get the best candidate to take the program going forward.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31