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When you think about turnarounds in sports history,
some obvious ones come to mind.
Bill Snyder turning around Kansas State football. The
Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves both went from worst-to-first that
season to meet each other in the 1991 World Series. There have been
many others.
But as remarkable as those feats were, Ronda Shirley’s
resurrection of the volleyball program at Hutchinson Community College
may have topped them all.
When Shirley arrived at HCC in 1998 as the ninth head
coach since the team’s inception in 1974, she took over a program
accustomed to losing. Not only did she have to turn around a team that
wasn’t able to compete from a talent standpoint with the rest of the
Jayhawk Conference, but she had to turn around a losing mentality that
was so profound that nobody in the community gave this team a second
thought.
How things have changed since then. Shirley enters her
10th season at Hutch
coming off back-to-back-to-back undefeated Jayhawk West and Region VI
championship seasons.
Shirley is now the HCC all-time
leader in coaching victories with a record of
258-115.
She won her 250th match
at Hutchinson on Oct. 25, 2006, a
a 3-1 victory over Barton County Her .681 winning percentage is
also No. 1 in program
history.
In 10 total seasons as a junior college volleyball
coach, Shirley is 288-135.
Shirley's program has now produced
seven NJCAA All-Americans, including three first-team All-Americans,
three Jayhawk Conference Freshmen of the Year, 27 all-Jayhawk West
players and 23 all-region players.
Playing the most aggressive schedule
in Blue Dragon history in 2006, Shirley's Lady Dragons took their
lumps at times. But that rugged schedule prepared them for the
postseason. HCC's record was 24-15, but the Lady Dragons went
through Jayhawk West play undefeated for the third-straight year and
the team captured its third-straight Region VI championship.
In the first round of the 2006 NJCAA
Tournament, Shirley guided the Lady Dragons to arguably the biggest
single victory in program history with a thrilling five-game victory
over eight-time national champion Miami-Dade in the first round. The
Lady Dragons went on to finish seventh in the 2006 national
tournament, defeating No. 10 San Jacinto in four games in the
seventh-place match to earn a third-straight national Top-Eight
finish.
Sophomore middle blocker Brandi Hood
was named a first-team NJCAA All-American to add to her first-team
all-league and all-region honors. Freshman Ludmila Amaral was named
a second-team NJCAA All-American as well as Jayhawk West Freshman of
the Year.
Shirley was unable to enjoy the
success of the 2005 season after contracting a rare eye disorder that forced her to
take a season-long medical leave. The 2005 Lady Dragons went 35-11 and
finished eighth in the NJCAA National Tournament.
As far as the 2004 season for
Shirley and the Lady Dragons, how's
this list for accomplishments:
+ 43-1 record (school record for wins and winning
percentage).
+ First Jayhawk West championship in team history.
+ First Region VI championship in team history.
+ Finished fifth in the NJCAA National Tournament.
+ Had a team record 41-match winning streak and a
75-game winning streak.
+ Was ranked as high as No. 2 in the national poll.
+ Twenty-one of the 43 wins were against ranked
competition.
+ HCC had five on the All-Conference team and two
All-Americans.
+ A record crowd of 1,200 filled the Sports Arena to
see HCC break a 21-year losing streak to Barton County.
+ Shirley was named Jayhawk West coach of the year.
+ Numerous team and individual records fell.
Perhaps the overriding theme of the HCC volleyball
turnaround was Shirley’s passion for coaching the game.
Early in the process, it was nothing for Shirley to
take 30 or more minutes after a win or loss to talk to her team in the
locker room. During practices, Shirley demanded that her players give
their all or there would be consequences. During matches, no matter
the competition, Shirley demanded her teams play like winners.
All that pounding finally started to be driven home in
her third season in 2000.
Shirley’s first team in 1998 was 18-28. With a win over
Colby, that snapped a five-year conference losing streak. The Lady
Dragons turned things around in 1999, producing the first winning
season since 1991 with a 28-18 record. Then in 2000, things really
started to change at HCC.
Shirley will point to every player under her guidance
as having a role in the program’s resurrection. But the sophomore
group of 2000 - Sarah Smith, Katie Esau, Jamie Wilson,
Amanda Goetz, Jill
Fitzgerald, Crystal Clark and Kami Kabriel - was the first group to
take Shirley’s message and apply it on the court. The 2000 team went
37-13.
The 2001 Lady Dragons went 35-15, not quite surpassing
the win total of 2000, but advancing to the Region VI championship
match for the first time since the program's first season in 1974.
The 2002 HCC volleyball team went 32-18, but the strength of schedule
was vastly increased. The Lady Dragons reached to the Region VI
championship match once again.
The bar was raised even higher after the 2003 season.
HCC went 41-7 with five of those losses coming to eventual national
champion Barton County. HCC again played for the regional
championship, but lost for the third straight year. Sophomore Stefanie
Sloan became the Lady Dragons’ first NJCAA All-American when she was
named to the 2003 second-team.
That set the stage for 2004, the greatest season in HCC volleyball
history.
Shirley joined the HCC coaching staff in 1998 as head
volleyball coach and assistant softball coach. She took over as head
softball coach in the middle of the 2000 season, but relinquished
that position
before the 2002 season to concentrate solely on volleyball.
Her first coaching job was at Brown Mackie College in
Salina, Kan., where she was the assistant softball and volleyball
coach from 1995-1996. Shirley became the Lions’ head volleyball coach
in 1997 and went 30-20 in that one season.
Shirley graduated from Brown Mackie 1992 with
Associates Degree in Business. She played softball for both seasons at
BMC, earning all-conference honors twice.
In 1995, Shirley graduated from Kentucky Wesleyan
College in Owensboro, Ky., where she played softball two years and was
a graduate assistant in 1995. Kentucky Wesleyan was conference
champion both years and went to the NCAA Division II national
tournament in her senior year.
Shirley was an all-conference player in her junior and
senior years and earned All-America status as a catcher in 1995. She
graduated with a BA in English.
Shirley is from Earling, Iowa, and graduated from
Harlan Community High School in 1990. She is married to Jeff Shirley,
a counselor for HCC Admissions Office. She and Jeff have
four children, Marcus,
8; Aliyah, 5½; Isaiah,
3,
and Olivia, 1.
Coach
Shirley can be reached by
e-mail at
shirleyr@hutchcc.edu.
HCC team records under Coach
Shirley
1998, 18-28
8th in the Jayhawk Conference
1999, 28-18 5th in
the conference
2000, 37-13 3rd in the conference
2001, 35-15 4th in the conference
2002, 32-18 3rd in the conference
2003, 41-7 2nd in the
conference
2004, 43-1
Conference, regional champions; No. 5 in nation.
2005, On medical leave
2006, 24-15
Conference, regional champions; No. 7 in nation. |
