Replacing a long-time coach at the collegiate sports level is usually a tough undertaking. But in the case of new UNM volleyball coach Tom Peterson, who replaced 17-year veteran Laurel Brassey Iversen last November, his past success may make Iversen’s departure a sweeter pill to swallow.
Peterson guided the Penn State University men’s volleyball team to the NCAA semifinals in five of six seasons as head coach, including winning the national championship in 1994 and a national coach of the year title for himself.
At Salt Lake Community College from 1996-1998, Peterson’s teams racked up an 80-38 overall record and were at one point ranked as high as seventh in the national rankings.
While head coach at Utah State University, Peterson guided the women’s team to an NCAA Tournament birth in 2000, and to the Big West Conference east division title in 1999.
Yet even with all of Peterson’s success as coach, he seems to realize that taking over a program, especially one that has languished since 1996 when the Lobos’ last posted a winning season, is an enterprise of mammoth proportions.
“We have a long way to go as far as putting everything together that you want with putting in a new system,” Peterson said. “The girls have to get used to new coaches, and now new players. It’s pretty hard to say you’re going to turn the program around in one year.”
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Further compounding the all-new coaching staff’s endeavor is the fact that the Lobos return only five players from last year’s squad that went 9-15 overall and 5-9 in the Mountain West Conference. Of the five returnees, none are seniors.
“We have a lot of girls with not a lot of experience, so it’s going to be interesting to see how we do in a very good conference,” Peterson said. “It would be great, in our first year, to just beat everybody, but that’s hard to do.”
Peterson said it would be similarly unrealistic for the program to do well based solely on his success as coach.
“I think lots of coaches make the mistake of saying ‘It’s me doing this’ or ‘I’m going to do this’ when it’s the players that have to play,” Peterson said. “And they have to buy in to what we’re doing. And we’re progressing toward that point.”
Still, Peterson lauded his coaching staff and what it has been able to accomplish in a short amount of time. With the departure of several key players to either graduation or defection, they’ve had to scramble to even fill the 12-player squad, which presented the coaching staff with its first recruiting challenge. Nevertheless, Peterson remains confident with the team’s current structure.
“I think we train volleyball players very well, and I think our coaching staff is as good as anybody, anywhere,” Peterson said. “Once we kind of get some tradition going and the program is stable, and once we get our hands on some name players, we’re just going to continue to go up and up.”
The Lobos’ season begins with their home opener Aug. 31 at 7 p.m. in Johnson Arena, when they’ll face the University of Texas at El Paso in the opening round of the Comcast Invitational Tournament.
