Fall 2021 volleyball

[RhowdyRam02]

Weird goings on in regards to our volleyball program. Monday afternoon head coach Nicki Holmes resigned effective immediately for personal reasons. This is the entirety of the statement:

"Rhode Island women's volleyball head coach Nicki Holmes resigned from his position for personal reasons, it was announced Monday afternoon. The move is effective immediately.

A replacement is expected to be announced in the near future.

In his lone season with the Rams, Holmes was 7-8 overall and 5-3 in Atlantic 10 play. Rhode Island won the A-10 North division and reached the conference semifinals."

What jumped out at me was there isn't a single quote from either side. I can't remember that happening in previous releases announcing a coach's leaving. Back in May when the softball coach's contract wasn't renewed Thorr thanked the coach in the release and the outgoing coach thanked Thorr and the University. Even the Jim Baron firing which became contentious had statements from both parties. Honestly, the lack of statements from either side is troubling and I hope there are no University issues here.

Then to make it even weirder they announced the new head coach yesterday morning, promoting Angel Agu from her position as assistant coach. Here is the link to the University press release: https://gorhody.com/news/2021/7/6/angel ... yball.aspx

What's weird about this is the word interim isn't mentioned once in this article. Less than 24 hours after your previous head coach resigned for personal reasons you make a permanent hire of an assistant coach with no head coaching experience that's been here for one year with no search? Seems like we're missing something there as well

[SGreenwell]

With the "interim" thing, could be a matter of semantics. She's almost certainly going to be the coach for the full season, so maybe that's why you don't use the interim tag. And since it's volleyball, I can imagine they could decide to give her a two or three year try, and it's not like there will be a lot of pressure to do a national search for a new coach.

When it comes to Holmes leaving - If you're an optimist, you accept the statement on its face. Maybe he's having a mental or physical health problem, and he's decided to step back from being a head coach, which is a stressful job. Of course... Typically, the timing would suggest that "something" happened. I don't really want to speculate, but at least from a bit of a search just now, the usuals didn't immediately jump out.

[RhowdyRam02]

When it comes to Holmes leaving - If you're an optimist, you accept the statement on its face. Maybe he's having a mental or physical health problem, and he's decided to step back from being a head coach, which is a stressful job. Of course... Typically, the timing would suggest that "something" happened. I don't really want to speculate, but at least from a bit of a search just now, the usuals didn't immediately jump out.

I hope your optimistic take is right. Just not sure why the statement wouldn't have Thorr add something like, "unfortunately coach Holmes has had to step away from his coaching duties for personal reasons. We thank him for the year he spent in Kingston and wish him well in his future endeavors," unless we were trying to distance ourselves as much as possible

[eli#10]

This is what is puzzling: why is there a waiting period before a new bball coach can be hired? My recollection is that the job has to be advertised for several days before a new coach may be hired.