Hiram College graduate Grace Wilson aspires to become the head coach of a college volleyball program one day and is getting closer to reaching her goal. The 2017 Terriers’ alum is now coaching for a Division I program, having been named as the first assistant coach for Youngstown State University on June 4.
“I am definitely really excited,” Wilson told The Weekly Villager on June 28. “I can’t wait to meet all of the players and get to know them and not just help build them as people but as volleyball players as well. I am really excited to hit the ground running with Coach Jarrett.”
Wilson has spent five years as an assistant coach, splitting time as a graduate assistant at the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, IND for two seasons and three years as an assistant coach at Cedarville University in Dayton, OH. It will be her first-time coaching in a Division I program, and it is an opportunity she is excited to tackle.
Wilson was introduced to athletics as a child when her father, Dave Wilson, used to take her to work with him. He worked as a sports play-by-play announcer and broadcaster for Cleveland State University women’s basketball. Wilson can recount all of the times she tagged along with her father while he called games.
“I grew up going to a lot of college basketball games. Just being in that college athletics’ setting with him really changed my life because I always knew I wanted to be involved and I wanted to play in college,” Wilson added. “I knew I wanted to make it a career once I got to college women’s basketball programs.”
Wilson played several sports throughout her childhood and picked up volleyball when she reached junior high. According to her, she enjoyed how much of a team sport volleyball was compared to the other sports she competed in. Unlike in sports such as basketball or track and field, volleyball required all players on the court to be on the same page all of the time.
She was a three-year varsity starter while attending Chagrin Falls High School and committed to play volleyball at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, OH.
After two seasons at Lakeland, Wilson transferred to play at Hiram College for her final two seasons. It was while at Hiram that she wanted to become a volleyball coach, noting that her volleyball IQ grew tremendously while suiting up for the Terriers.
“I developed more as a player and that is when I really wanted to get into coaching for sure,” she noted. “I feel like I grew as a volleyball player, Hiram is such a great school and I feel like I grew as a person. I met some really great professors and a lot of really great people that worked there who really helped me become who I am today.”
After graduating, Wilson coached the Chagrin Falls’ middle school volleyball program for one season before traveling to Indiana where she became a graduate assistant at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology.
After finishing her postgraduate degree, Wilson returned to Ohio and became an assistant volleyball coach at Cedarville University. She called her three years at Cedarville University some of the most impactful years of her life in helping shape her coaching identity.
“I worked for a really good coach, Greg Smith,” she said. “He has been at Division I programs his whole coaching career so he knows his stuff. He taught me well. I feel like he mentored me really well and I feel like he gave me a lot of good opportunity when I was there.”
After the 2023-24 school year ended, Wilson said she was contacted by Riley Jarrett, then-head coach at West Liberty University, another rival Division III school, to join her at Youngstown State University where she had just accepted the head coaching position.
“I knew I wanted to move up to Division I so this just seemed it was the right time. She asked me if I was interested, so from that phone call it drew me back to Northeast Ohio,” Wilson noted.
Wilson’s return to Northeast Ohio also reunites her with the Horizon League, a conference she became very familiar with while attending Cleveland State University women’s basketball games with her father and also when she served as the ball girl for the Lady Vikings.
Although having only coached college volleyball for five seasons, Wilson is on the fast track and now joins a Division I program that has not experienced a winning season since the 2014 campaign but she is taking everything in stride.
“Volleyball is the same at Division III or Division I so it is the same game,” she said. “It has definitely been different than what I have experienced before but has not been overwhelming.”
