Coach Maria is going into her 5th year on staff for the WVC Knights Volleyball program. This will be her 3rd year as Head Volleyball Coach.
Maria is from East Wenatchee where she graduated from Eastmont High School in 2016. She then went to Wenatchee Valley College and graduated after two years with her Associates in Arts and Science. While at Wenatchee Valley College, she played as a Knight on the Volleyball team. After WVC, she studied at Central Washington University on the Wenatchee Valley College remote campus. She graduated with her Bachelors in Elementary Education with Teaching English as a Second Language as her minor in 2020. For the next two years she substituted and then taught full time, all while being named Assistant Head Coach for Wenatchee Valley College Women's Volleyball.
In 2022 Coach Maria was named Head Coach. As someone who went through this program as a student-athlete only 4 years prior to this season, she knew what struggles there were in the past and looked to make a brighter future for this program and the Wenatchee Valley College Knights Volleyball culture. The season of 2022 did not bring much success with a record of 3-13 in conference, but it brought hard lessons and a base of stability that the sophomores could stand on to lead the freshman into the dawn of what this season brought them. Success can be measured in more ways than just numbers or what the outside world sees. For this 2023 Knights Volleyball, it brought more than the success that you can see on the record or in the newspaper. Building up to the season, the Knights signed young women to the roster from around the world, such as Brazil and Puerto Rico. They also signed hometown heroes and out of state superstars. Watching the team get to know one another and build a rapport before stepping on the court together in August, through teammate dates throughout the summer and weekly check in meetings, there was a sense of family that first day in the gym. It was like watching old friends meeting each other again for the first time. This instant love and affection for one another was unmatched to anything this program has seen or experienced in previous years. They are a group that is willing to fight, help, console, and win together no matter what happens around them. The connections only grew stronger and every day they sat down together before practice and wrote in their journals about how to be a “Compassionate Competitor”, “Servant Leader”, or to talk about the “Relentless Pursuit of Transformation”. These small wins in their own lives and individuality translated to a sport that is very mentally and emotionally demanding on these young women. This gave them power over their minds, hearts, and thoughts while battling on a court as one.
Everything that happened this year is directly tied together into what is only expressed as an incredible year for Wenatchee Valley College Knights Volleyball. The records that were broken, the achievements of having one student-athlete making All-Region First Team, two more making All-Region Second Team, and another making All-Region Third Team, staying in the top 10 NWAC Coaches Poll all season, having a student-athlete get NWAC Defensive Player of the Week, making it to Playoffs, all while keeping a grade point average of 3.2 for the entire team is nothing short of marvelous. Having a 180 on a program and going 13-3 in conference with an overall record of 22-10, one could say Coach Maria is very excited to see what this 2024 season has to bring.
