The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
UAB Volleyball Alumni Spotlight: Brenda Williams
5/28/2009 12:00:00β―AM | Women's Volleyball
May 28, 2009
This is the first UAB Volleyball Alumni Spotlight, and it features former Blazer head coach Brenda Williams.
All UAB Volleyball Alumni are encouraged to fill out the online Alumni Questionnaire (also accessible through the volleyball homepage) and to join the UAB Volleyball Alumni group on Facebook.
Brenda Williams took the reigns of UAB volleyball in 1980, just the third year of the program. She coached the Blazers for 12 seasons, posting a record of 290-227 at the school and winning a Sun Belt Conference championship in 1990 and a Great Midwest Conference title in 1991. She tallied three 30-win seasons with the Blazers, including a school-record 33 wins in her final season in 1991.
Williams currently serves as the head coach at Chicago's Olivet Nazarene University, a position she has held for 13 years. She has guided the program to seven national tournament appearances at the NAIA level and two national championships at the National Christian College Athletic Association level. Williams has coached 17 All-Americans at the school and more than 60 all-conference performers. For her 25-year head-coaching career, she has amassed a record of 678-448.
For a complete bio, visit the Brenda Williams page at www.olivet.edu/athletics.
Coach Williams was kind enough recently to participate in this question-and-answer to look back on her time at UAB and tell us more about her career over the past two decades since leaving the Blazer program.
What do you remember most abut your time at UAB?
The great young women that I had the opportunity to coach there. Those relationships still mean the world to me!
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment in the sport of volleyball?
One of the greatest things that I was able to be part of was helping establish the National Invitational Volleyball Championship for NCAA Division I schools (the NIT of College Volleyball).
Former coach Geri Polvino of Eastern Kentucky, the late Charlie Daniel, coach of Western Kentucky, and myself sat on the back of a bus at the AVCA Convention and decided we were going to start the NIVC no matter what. We met that January at Western Kentucky and started the ball rolling. Once we got the AVCA on board with us along with some other key people, the NIVC was made possible. It stayed that way for seven years.
Our goal was to give more postseason opportunities to NCAA institutions, and it did just that. UAB actually hosted the very first tournament, which was first called the WIVC (Women's Invitational Volleyball Championship) where we had 16 teams participate. It then became the National Invitational Volleyball Championship with 20 teams invited. We felt we gave teams new life and hope for their programs, and then we saw the NCAA expand their postseason field. It was a great accomplishment for women's intercollegiate volleyball!
What was it like to build a program at UAB that was just two years old when you took over?
It was a very big challenge. Especially in Birmingham, volleyball was not that popular back then. I was also very young and anxious to play on a much higher level. We began as a part time program and put a lot of blood, sweat and tears in old Bell Gym in August in Birmingham with no air conditioning :-) just to get it going.
People forget that I started my college playing days at UAB in 1973 in Bell Gym. I played two years at UAB before transferring to Alabama to finish my playing days when UAB did away with athletics for a while. It really was my goal to come back to build the program at UAB to equal those of the SEC that I had played in.
How rewarding was it to win the first two conference championships in UAB volleyball history in 1990 and 1991?
The first was the most rewarding as it said we finally arrived. It took us 10 years, but we had finally gotten to nine scholarships and had enough depth to compete against those teams with 10-12 full rides. We had placed second or third a few times but would always fall short to the loaded teams. But that 1990 team took on all challenges that year. It was nice to know we left the Sun Belt as champions and got to represent them in the NIVC that year.
Then in 1991 we go into the new Great Midwest Conference and everyone has DePaul picked to win it all (since they were ranked 15th in the Midwest polls that year) and we upset them in the conference finals in Memphis. We didn't feel it was an upset, as we felt we had the better all around team that year and had played one of the toughest schedules around. Again we got to represent the Great Midwest at the NIVC since they and the Sun Belt did not have an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament at that time.
So winning those two titles and then having the NIVC for the players was great since the NCAA had not expanded the field yet. Our players were able to enjoy a lot of success because of their dedication and hard work!
Tell us a little bit about the success you have been able to have with your current program at Olivet Nazarene University.
We are a small Christian university about 53 miles south of Chicago. Actually we are the summer home of the Chicago Bears :-) We are an NAIA institution and finished last season ranked 15th in the nation. We were 38-11 overall and 10-0 in the conference. We have been National Tournament Qualifiers the past three years.
I have great young women to work with along with a great coaching staff! They asked me to take this program to a new level when I came here 13 years ago and I feel very good where we have gone but we are not done yet. Our next goal is to get into the top 10 and we feel we are ready to make that move. We are not a fully-funded program but we are able to recruit exceptional student athletes that want to play high-level volleyball at a Christian University.
