Owensboro volleyball head coach Melissa Hibbs was awarded with the 3rd Region Volleyball Coach of the Year award. This award comes after she led Owensboro to their first appearance in a regional tournament in the program’s history.
The Lady Red Devils had a season record of 22-12 and had their first appearance in the district championship as well. Although the district final against Owensboro Catholic didn’t end in their favor, their season wasn’t over as they had moved on to regionals for the first time. Despite their 6-9 start to the season, Hibbs said the team had made it a mission to make a postseason run after realizing what their potential could be.
“Our biggest focus was: ‘in October, that’s all that matters. When you get to the postseason your record doesn’t matter.’ We just kept talking about how we’ve been in every game, but we just weren’t clicking this game, there were unforced errors or there were a lot of missed serves. We knew we had the potential, but we just couldn’t get over the hump at the beginning of this season.”
“I think that once the season progressed, we started getting those wins and their confidence built, they saw in themselves finally that this is what they can do and if they keep working this is what could happen.”
The key factor that helped the team perform better as the season progressed was the team chemistry. Hibbs said the girls began to click off the court as well as on it. Whether it was going to dinner together after games, hanging out outside of school, sending memes in the team group chat, or developing superstitions around what music to listen before a match, Hibbs was just happy to see them get into a team mindset.
The team chemistry really hit an all-time high when the team took a week-long trip to Florida the week before the district tournament, Hibbs said. Seeing one another in a different setting like that and getting to know each other outside of just volleyball helped them perform better in the postseason, she said. Hibbs said they realized they could possibly win the regional tournament, and their confidence showed in their performance that saw them reach the semifinals.
Before coaching Hibbs played volleyball in high school in her hometown of Mascoutah, Illinois. She then played in college at Southwestern Illinois College before finishing her career at Brescia University.
Hibbs has been coaching for about 13 years, and began with helping coach the Owensboro freshman volleyball team. She then began teaching in Muhlenberg County for a year while still coaching the Owensboro junior varsity team. The next year she took over for Mary Howard as varsity head coach at Owensboro.
To win the 3rd Region Coach of the Year award was an honor for Hibbs after making it to the tournament for the first time, but she enjoyed seeing her team celebrate the achievement more because of the work they put into making the program more respected, she said. She felt the girls on the team deserved credit in her winning the award.
“There’s so many coaches that have wonderful years, but for me it was the girls who put in the work,” she said. “I may lay the expectations down, but the girls were the ones that met them and put in the work. As much as I’m so humble in getting this award, I very much give credit to the girls. If the girls didn’t put in the work, nobody’s recognizing that coach.”
