AVCA National Coach of Year Kim Cherniss talks strategy with her team during a timeout at NCAA championship in St. Paul, Minn. Looking on are Mercedes Winchester (6), Megan Johnson and Jane Chafeh (28).
12/15/2008 11:18:00 AM
When Kim Cherniss was notified late last week that she had been selected as the American Volleyball Coaches Association/NCAA Division II national coach of the year she was shocked.
"I'm quite stunned to be honest. An award like that has never been a point of focus for me. It is a nice sentiment," said Cherniss, the women's volleyball coach at Cal State San Bernardino for the past 18 seasons.
Recent history has shown that the coach of the national championship team has been selected by the AVCA as "coach of the year" so Cherniss wasn't expecting any such honor since the Coyotes finished as the NCAA Division II runnerup to champion Concordia-St. Paul and Coach Brady Starkey.
"The goals that we met recognize what the girls accomplished as a team," said Cherniss, who will head to Omaha, Neb., to accept the award at the Jostens Coaches Honors Luncheon on Thursday in conjunction with the AVCA annual convention.
This past season, Cherniss -- along with Associate Head Coach Danny Scott and assistant coach Mike Gutierrez -- guided the Coyotes to a 30-4 record, the most wins by the team ever in the Cherniss era. Along with it came a third-straight California Collegiate Athletic Association title, a third West Region championship in the last six years and a third trip to the NCAA national championship in the last eight years.
The team advanced to the Final Four for only the second time in the history of the program and then played in the national championship match for the first time in the history of the program dating back to 1984-85. CSUSB lost 3-2 to Concordia-St. Paul, the 2007 and 2008 champion. CSUSB was the only team to defeat the Golden Bears in the regular season.
CSUSB began the season ranked No. 4 in the AVCA's pre-season poll and never went any lower than that and was ranked No. 1 in the poll for four weeks. The team won 14 of its last 16 matches, including 10 in a row by scores of 3-0 and finished the season ranked No. 2 in the nation.
Cherniss has 382 victories in her 18 seasons at CSUSB and her teams have won 20 or more matches in a season every year since 1996. Since the start of the 1997 season, the Coyotes have a record of 313-62, captured six CCAA titles and advanced to the NCAA "Sweet 16" each of the last nine years.
The Coyotes volleyball program has produced 10 AVCA/NCAA all-Americans since 1999 -- Jamie Liefveld Hayes, Amy Pope Schumacher, Kim Morohunfola, Kim Ford, Cathleen Price, Brie Harris, Sara Hoffman, Sharea Drawn, Jessica Granados and Meghan Haas. Granados, Ford, Morohunfola and Price have been honored more than once. Two players -- Harris and Morohunfola -- were Division II national players of the year.