BYU women’s volleyball coach and Carpinteria native Heather Olmstead has been named the American Volleyball Coaches Association’s Coach of the Year.
Olmstead has guided BYU to a 31-1 record and the NCAA Tournament semifinals The Cougars play top-ranked Stanford on Thursday in Minneapolis.
The second semifinal has Nebraska taking on Illinois, which is coached by Laguna Blanca alum Chris Tamas.
Heather Olmstead is the second member of her family to win the AVCA Coach of the Year award for the women’s game. Her brother, Shawn, won it as BYU’s coach in 2014. He took the Cougars to the national championship match, with Heather as an assistant coach.
Heather took over the program in 2015, when Sean became the head men’s coach at BYU.
This season, Heather’s Cougars were the No. 1 offensive team in the country and has won 90 of 101 sets played.
She credits her coaching staff for the team’s success.
“I have the best coaching staff in the country,” Olmstead said during a press conference before the semifinals. “They are so diligent with all the work they put in behind the scenes.”
Heather and her twin sister, Nicole, were standout athletes at Carpinteria High. She is one of seven children of Rick and Trudy Olmstead. Rick Olmstead was the boys volleyball coach at Santa Barbara High when Karch Kiraly was on the team.
Heather went on to play college volleyball at Utah State, where she was a four-year starter (1998-2001).
She played professionally for a couple of years before getting into coaching.
She got her coaching start at Utah State and then assisted at the University of Utah before moving to BYU in 2011.