Although it has only been a few months since graduating from Hiram College, Kyle Martini is not finished with his alma matter just yet. The 2025 graduate has been tapped to become the new men’s volleyball coach, as formally announced by Hiram on Aug. 8.
“I think it just shows personally how much Hiram has meant to me,” the first-year coach said. “I feel like a lot of other students could say the same. When you want that small school feel where you are able to work with professors, coaches, administrators, whatever it is, they are all really accessible and available and they all want you to succeed. That is what I am looking for in a school, I think this just emphasized that Hiram is that place.”
As The Villager previously reported, longtime women’s volleyball Coach Brittany Dye was promoted to take over as the men’s volleyball coach but stepped down to take a job as the new athletic director at Crestwood High School. Martini, Hiram’s former outside hitter, decided that he was ready to seize this new opportunity.
According to Martini, he had been searching for a teaching position but when he heard that the men’s volleyball coaching position was open, he did not hesitate to apply.
“It was not very long,” he added. “I wanted the program to find some sort of stability because we have already had so much success; over the past, we have had some major coaching turnover, so if we can find some stability on and off the court, it would do us so much good.”
Martini not only has assumed his first head coaching opportunity at the collegiate level, but he takes over a program where he enjoyed tremendous success, being a member of the 2024 squad which captured the Alleghany Mountain Collegiate Conference championship to earn a berth in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III tournament.
He will now coach the same group of players he competed alongside for the last three years, which will be a different dynamic altogether.
“It is going to be one of the biggest challenges that I will face this year,” he noted. “I think for me, I am at a bit of an advantage just because I was a transfer and I took some time off between school in general during the pandemic so I already was a little bit older than some of these guys. I think my age discrepancy there will help me out just a little bit.”
Martini arrived in Hiram before the 2022-23 season, transferring from Penn State University. He said that he took a gap year from school during the COVID-19 pandemic but wanted a change of scenery and yearned to find a smaller school to attend after attending Seneca Valley High School, a large high school in Western Pennsylvania. He spent early college years with the Nittany Lions.
Martini said that he was personally recruited by former Hiram Coach Glen Conley to come play for the Terriers. He was already familiar with Conley because he had coached his mother in women’s volleyball at Edinboro University.
“To be honest until he called me, I was assuming my volleyball days were over,” Martini said. “I played recreationally but that was going to be it. He called me up, we chatted, and I visited, and I enjoyed meeting the guys here and enjoyed the campus.”
In addition to having a familial connection with Conley, coaching volleyball also ran in the family as his mother had served as a high school girls’ volleyball coach for close to 25 years. Now he continues the legacy of coaching volleyball.
Prior to becoming Hiram’s coach, Martini spent a year coaching junior varsity girls’ volleyball at Seneca Valley High School, eighth grade boys’ volleyball during the spring and also a year with a club volleyball team in Pennsylvania during his gap year.
Although Martini’s coaching experience is limited, he will be tasked with pushing the Terris back on track to once again be a conference title contender, after Hiram’s season ended in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference semifinal.
“I am very excited to get to work with from a different aspect,” he said. “To be honest, I am very excited to build the program and take it to the next level. I think since its inception, we have been steadily improving the program each and every year. If you go back and look at the record, that will show as well and I think in 2025-26 this will be our seventh year in competition, we have won the conference twice already so that is very, very quick success. My goal is to take us to that next level.”
