The problems with Iowa Volleyball are numerous and deep. First and formost this is the least historically successfull varsity program that Iowa has ever fielded so there is absolutely zero history of success and zero tradition. In the 36 previous seasons that Iowa Volleyball has fielded a varsity program, they only have had 8 B1G season winning records and almost all of those came under Sandy Stewart and Ruth Nelson in the 1980s. It is the only varsity sport that Iowa fields that has a losing series record against every other program in the conference and most are by extremely wide margins. There are two programs in the conference that we have never even beaten once. NOT ONE TIME. The facilities are some of the worst in the conference outside Northwestern. We are one of only three progrmas that do not have their own competition space, the fan support for all of Iowa's non-revenue sports is some of the weakest in the league, and we give our coaches shoe-string budgets to work with. A month ago they did install the new TereFlex competion floor so at least we are no longer one of the only programs in NCAA Division I that has to play their games on the basketball floor with white tape on the ground. So basically for the first time we actaully have somewhat of a volleyball competition space. Only took 36 years to get it.
Those are the historical challanges. Here are the more recent issues. The Cindy Fredrick era was devastating to Iowa Volleyball and it is not necessarily due to the win-lose record. Like her or not, Cindy Fredrick was and continues to be very highly regarded among those in the volleyball coaching community. She had a strong record of taking over multiple programs with no history of winning and building them into competitive programs competting for championships. The job she did at Washington State in the PAC-12 before coming to Iowa was probably the volleyball equivalent of what Bill Snyder did for Kansas State football. She was considered by almost everyone in the college volleyball world as the perfect hire for Iowa. An Iowa girl coming back to her home state to do what she had already done multiple times and that was to build a volleyball program from nothing. Well, something obviously went wrong, becasue the Cindy Fredrick era was a train wreck. The more devastating impact was what this did to the opinions of perspective coaching hires. They looked at Iowa and said; wow, if Cindy can't succeed there then there must be something wrong at Iowa. Gary Barta learned very quickly during the hiring process about how unattractive the head coaching job is at Iowa. His first search fell apart when he was pretty openly shuned by nemurous coaching prospects. Dingman was hired after the 2nd official search and by most acocunts was the 6th choice at best. Since the Dingman hire, Iowa volleyball is still a disaster and even more critical to the Iowa program, Cindy Frederick has moved on to UNLV and is having success rebuilding that program. So now the coaching community is looking at Cindy Fredrick and saying, she was successfull before Iowa and is successfull again after Iowa, so the problem wasn't Cindy Fredrick, the problem is Iowa. It is considered a grave yard job.
What is the solution? That's the million dollar question. Unless some sugar daddy booster comes along with a huge donation to the volleyball program, most if not all of the structural support issues for the program are not going to be resolved. Add on the fact that the B1G right now is the best volleyball conference in the country with 4-5 elite national programs with elite level coaches and 3-4 other programs that are just one small step away from joining that elite group. Who ever the next coach is will have to be recruiting head to head regionally against guys like Hugh McCutcheon, Kevin Hambly, John Cook and Kelly Sheffield. If you are a high end recruit in Minnesota and Sharon Dingman is coming into your living room to recruit you to Iowa, then Hugh McCutcheon comes in the next night and hands you his resume, and then the following night John Cook comes into your living room and talks to you about what he's been able to accomplish at Wisconsin and Nebraska, where are you going to go?
The only way Iowa will be able to land any type of coach is if they just throw some absolutely silly money at a real big name coach which won't happen. So, a bunch of problems with this volleyball program with no money to solve them. Expect Dingman to have an extremely long leash. This is the last year of her contract, but wouldn't shock me if she gets a year-to-year extension ala Jack Dahm. I heard that Barta was considering a coaching change after last season and put out some feelers to some possible coaching candidates to see what interest they would have. The story I was told was that he was rebuffed pretty quickly and realized that he better just stick with Dingman. With 9 B1G teams ranked in the top 25 and Illinois just outside the Top-25 but with multiple wins over a number of teams in the top 25, I don't see more than 2 conference wins this season. To the teams credit, they did take #8 Minnesota to 5 games this weekend before they lost.
This post was edited on 10/8 10:05 AM by 73chief
