As a volleyball coach with more than 30 years of experience at the club, high school, and collegiate levels, International Academy of Flint coach Amanda Moran knows what it takes to build a successful varsity program: a strong feeder system that gets young people involved in the sport, a system that players at all levels of the program are experienced in and understand, and a positive, supportive culture that allows players to grow and improve.
What she didn’t have a lot of, though, is time. She took the coaching position in July and, with that long-term vision in mind, has still had to prioritize simply getting the team up to speed for its season this fall. She’s also coaching the junior varsity team because she didn’t have time to hire a coach for that role when she took the job. Her main focus so far has been introducing a new system to players who have experienced a lot of coaching turnover over the past few seasons.
“What I’ve done is what a lot of the other schools around here have, which is put in a collegiate level system,” Moran said. “Most of these players had never had a positional system. So now I’m training them for positions, teaching within the system, and they’re learning it. It’s a complex system, but this is an amazing group of young women who just want to play volleyball. They love it.”
The team struggled last season with a 3-12 record, so the focus early this season has simply been on improvement now while still keeping the future of the program in mind. The team has lost its first two matches, but there have been signs of hope within those losses, including winning a set against Bendle in their most recent match on September 9.
Alyssa McGee, a senior, has played volleyball since she was in fourth grade. She said that the instability with coaching throughout her high school career has been difficult, but she and her teammates have already felt some positive changes and momentum.
“I feel really good about (coach Moran),” McGee said. “She demolished our foundation and rebuilt it in the matter of a month and a half. Our offense is our strength. We’ve come a really long way, I notice the difference myself and my teammates do but even some of the other coaches we’ve played against before, they’ve noticed it too. That’s a really good feeling to have.”
The players have felt immediate differences in the preparation for the season too, which has helped them build closer relationships as teammates.
“Our conditioning has been way harder, in a good way,” said senior Alannah Gray. “That’s also helped our team bonding get better.”
Learning better preparation and practice techniques and seeing those things materialize on the court has been a positive experience for the players so far.
“I can already see the growth in a lot of girls,” said senior Kamari Williams. “Coach has had us doing things that we weren’t even used to, we didn’t even know what she was talking about at first. But she just keeps helping us learn, and I’m excited to see what she does for next year, too, for the underclassmen coming up and what she has planned for them.”
Moran’s coaching background is impressive, and has taken her all over the country, including stops at Lehigh University, Wilmington University, and Nova Southeastern University. Locally, she also coached at Linden High School before taking some time off from high school coaching. International Academy had two ingredients that made the position enticing, though: a supportive administration and great athletes.
“I’ve never had so much positivity directed at me and the immediate want for me to be a part of their team,” Moran said. “They made me feel so welcome. The support from the administration here and the other coaching staff in other sports, has just been phenomenal.”
And although International Academy doesn’t have a big volleyball program, the players who are in it have shown they are committed and they have athletic ability that is exciting for any coach to work with.
“That is one of the best things about this job, is I have athletes,” Moran said. “I can coach anybody and teach the game to them. But you can’t coach someone to have that raw athletic ability, that natural ability. Right now, I have two ninth graders who are 5-10 or 5-11, left-handed, and they’re just athletes. I know they’re going to be amazing, but they’re also young and still have to learn.”
The focus on conditioning and harder practices for the volleyball team will benefit other sports, too. International Academy frequently has students who play multiple sports.
“We’re such a small school, so we have to kinda share the athletes,” Moran said. “And the coach of the varsity basketball team and I are really good friends and I’m like, look, I’m getting all your basketball girls ready for you, they’ll be in shape.”
Moran has been laying groundwork for the season beyond this year. She’s a physical education teacher at the International Academy of Flint Middle School and has built relationships with a few of the players in that age group and talk with them during gym class. She’s talked to the coach of the fifth grade team and been to some of their practices.
“The key to having a feeder system is teaching consistently from fifth grade all the way on up,” Moran said.
For the team’s seniors, they have goals for this season that include beating some of the teams they lost to last season and having a good showing in the district playoffs. But they’re also excited about what the future holds for their teammates who will be back next year.
“Like, that honestly might be the most important thing because being a senior, a lot of people look up to you already and seeing how you left (the program) is gonna make them want to leave it just how you did or better,” McGee said. “It’ll give us a goal to reach to.”
Moran’s high-level experience in the sport also has the players excited to learn from her and potentially continue their playing careers at the collegiate level.
“I pray and I hope that I get a scholarship for volleyball, and with the coaching of Coach Moran, I think I could,” Williams said. “I would love a way to continue to play volleyball because that is my favorite sport.”
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to catch up on all of our headlines every Tuesday.
