A New Path to Success for Women’s Volleyball

Collin Sibilia, the head coach of Holy Family’s women’s volleyball team, thought this would be another rebuilding year. In his six years courtside, Sibilia had become the winningest coach in the program’s history, but now it was time for a different kind of hard work. “I wanted to change the dynamic with our student athletes,” Sibilia says.

Sibilia was a student-athlete himself, playing soccer and volleyball in high school in South Jersey, before being recruited to the Misericordia University soccer team. The university didn’t have a men’s volleyball team, but Sibilia signed on as a student-assistant coach for the women’s team. When coaching became his focus after an injury that ended his soccer career, Sibilia based his style on the way he had been coached. “But each generation of student-athletes needs something different,” he says.

This season, Sibilia implemented a new approach that focused as much on mental fitness as physical fitness. He met regularly with the student-athletes, offering as much transparency as possible about each player’s role on the team, an exercise that, he says, could be more exhausting than time on the court. He consciously moved away from something he remembers from his playing days: the constant reminders of how happy he should be for the opportunity to be a student-athlete. And he decided to stop doing extensive post-game recaps. Instead, the team would discuss statistics, not outcomes, at later practices. The ultimate goal was to create “a very nurturing, healthy environment.”

That approach ended up being a winning one, for the student-athletes and for the team, which earned a spot in the 2025 NCAA volleyball championship. Sibilia, who is also the director of Holy Family’s e-sports team and a lecturer in the School of Arts & Sciences, was named the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference coach of the year for a second time.