NCAA Women
November 29, 2023
After chewing up and spitting out five coaches over 15 years, the women’s volleyball program at Eastern Illinois fell off a cliff in 2019.
The toothless Panthers went 3-26 and 1-15 in the low-major Ohio Valley Conference with an RPI computer ranking of 314, putting them in the bottom 6.2% of NCAA Division I’s 335 teams.
Into that quagmire stepped Sara Thomas, embracing the challenge of flipping the script of futility in her first go at the helm of a college team.
Eastern Illinois volleyball had known painfully little success since its last appearance in the NCAA Tournament in 2001. But four years after taking on a seemingly hopeless job, Thomas has kicked EIU’s mud of losing off of her shoes.
Her Panthers won 28 of their 32 matches this year, finished first by a three-match margin in the OVC during the regular…
