2 decades can be a long time.

For the 2017 Texas A&M-Commerce LIon Volleyball team, not a single member had even been born the last time that Lion Volleyball had been to the NCAA Division II postseason. It had been a long and trying time.

After 7 seasons and 185 wins, Coach Kathy Goodlett decided to pursue other volleyball related opportunites. Terri Johnson took over and coached from 1990-1995 with her best season coming in 1994 with a second place finish and a 21-12 record. Larry Blackwell came next and led the program from 1996-2002, racking up 122 wins over 7 seasons. Gwen Weatherford came next and with a bare bones budget coached for 5 seasons, never having a winning season and constantly having to deal with athletic administration that would not help her out at all. Weatherford left in 2008, and Mark Pryor came in for two seasons and notched a 41-21 record before leaving for a much better funded University of North Dakota program. Lion volleyball needed a coach who would stay and see things through.

Enter Craig Case.

Case, a St. Cloud State University grad, was an experienced coach who had a reputation of doing a lot with a little. His only saving grace would be his ability to recruit, and his personality as a player’s coach that his players loved to play for. His first head coaching job was at NAIA St. Gregory’s, where he took that job restarting a program that had not played in years. He had a month to put together a team and won 4 games and had 2 All-Conference players. That caught the attention of another NAIA school in Valley City State University in North Dakota and coached a small school and put together a respectable program. After Pryor left for the Great White North, Case came south to coach the Lions.

In his first 4 years, Case went 68-52. It was the best the 4 year stretch in a long time and then he got the best gift any coach could get, a new athletic director. Ryan Ivey arrived in Commerce in time for the fall of 2013 where Case showed what could happen with a rejuvinated athletic department as the Lions posted a 23-9 record, but then crashed to 7-23 the next season. Ivey asked Case what he needed to have success, and Ivey delivered. Case rebounded with a winning season the next year. The school got another solid athletic director when Ivey left for Austin Peay University when former SMU associate AD Tim McMurray came to Commerce, and then the good times started to roll.

McMurray increased the resources the Lion Volleyball even more and Case notched another winning record, setting them up for 2017.

2017 saw Case and the Lions move back to the upper part of the Lone Star Conference for the first time in a long time. With a 21-12 record and a 15-5 in LSC play, the Lions finished the regular season in the LSC Semifinals, where they bowed out to Texas Women’s University, but their was still more volleyball to play.

Watching the seeding for a possible national tournament bid, history was made. Case and the Lion Women took the 6th seed in the South Central Regional that see them take on Metro State. It was the end of a drought and the beginning of a fruitful time of Volleyball.

The Lion Women lost a hard fought 3-2 first round game, but it set the stage for future teams and a stretch of excellence that would last until the end of the Division II days.

2017 Texas A&M-Commerce Lion Volleyball

NCAA Division II South Central Quarterfinalists