Tennessee Volunteers - Volleyball

Volleyball

The Lady Vols volleyball team have won 4 SEC championships. Two-time National Coach of the Year Rob Patrick has developed a tradition of excellence since coming to Tennessee 13 years ago. Following his arrival at Rocky Top, Patrick has become one of the nation's top coaches and helped the Lady Vols attain levels of success never before reached in Knoxville, as evidenced by NCAA Tournament berths in five of the last six years, including a run to the Final Four in 2005.

With an impressive 24-8 record in 2009, the Big Orange now has won 20 or more matches in six of the last eight campaigns and has done so seven times in a 10-year span. Prior to Patrick's arrival at UT in 1997, the Lady Vols last recorded a 20-win season in 1988. His nine-year stretch of winning seasons from 1998-2006 marked the longest-such run in program history, topping the previous high of seven, set from 1978-84. The Big Orange finished the 2009 campaign with a school-record 16 wins in SEC action, finishing in a tie for second before earning its fifth bid to the NCAA Tournament in the past six seasons where it reached the second round. Following a tough 2007 season, the Lady Vols regrouped to post the third-largest turnaround in NCAA Division I in 2008. Under Patrick's direction, UT doubled its win total from 11 to 22 and returned to the NCAA Tournament after a one-year absence. For his efforts, Patrick was named the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) South Region Coach of the Year, as well as the Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year, for the second time in his career.

During his 13-year tenure at Rocky Top, Patrick has compiled an impressive 267-143 (.651) record, and he became the program's all-time winningest coach with a 3-0 victory over Auburn on Oct. 3,2008. Under Patrick's guidance, eight different student-athletes have been named All-Americans on a total of 15 occasions, including Nikki Fowler who claimed honorable mention honors from the AVCA in 2008 before picking up the honors alongside libero Chloe Goldman in 2009. Prior to those awards, the last players to accomplish the feat were Yuliya Stoyanova and Sarah Blum who both picked up AVCA Honorable Mention accolades as well, following the 2006 campaign.

In 2005 the Lady Vols achieved the program's first ever appearance in the NCAA Final Four and highest year-end ranking in school history. During that memorable year, the Lady Vols fought past some early season obstacles and compiled a stellar 25-9 overall record, finishing sixth in the nation after falling to eventual national champion Washington in the national semifinals of the NCAA Tournament in San Antonio, Texas. For his efforts, Patrick was named the 2005 NCAA National Coach of the Year by VBall Magazine. The season before its run to the Final Four, Tennessee put together an equally impressive season in which it emerged victorious in a school-record 32 matches, while dropping just three contests all year. The Lady Vols accomplished a number of goals in 2004, including winning an SEC regular-season title for the first time in school history, defeating Florida, 3-2, on the final day of the season to tie the Gators with identical 15-1 marks. Just a mere seven days later, the Orange and White made it two titles in two weeks, topping UF, once again by a 3-2 score, in the SEC Tournament championship match. A couple of weeks following that accomplishment, the Big Orange won a pair of NCAA Tournament matches for the initial time in Tennessee annals and advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 20 years. Based on the team's fast rise to prominence, Patrick was awarded both the AVCA South Region and the SEC Coach of the Year awards, as well as CVU.com National Coach of the Year honors. He was also a finalist for the AVCA National Coach of the Year award.