(Photo: Craig Houtz/Penn State Athletics)
The Arizona State volleyball team has found its new head coach in Stevie Mussie. Mussie, 30, comes to Tempe via Happy Valley, Pennsylvania where she was an assistant at Penn State for two years.
True to his form, Athletic Director Ray Anderson wasted no time in finding the new head coach. The move comes less than a month after Jason Watson left after eight seasons at ASU to take the head coaching job at the Arkansas.
The move will be the first head coaching stint for Mussie. Prior to Penn State, she served as an assistant coach at North Carolina State, Virginia, and Colorado, playing a key role in the turnaround of the programs.
“I want to thank Ray Anderson, Don Bocchi, Deanna Garner Smith and Rocky Harris for the opportunity to build this program into a national power,” Mussie said. I am looking forward to being the head coach here at ASU and creating a program that is consistently elite, not only in the Pac-12, but also nationally. I want to thank Russ Rose and Penn State University for the unparalleled opportunity to be apart of not only their exceptional volleyball program but their Penn State family as well.”
Mussie is no stranger to the Pac-12 as she was a member of the 2005 Washington Huskies national championship team in addition to her time spent as an assistant with Colorado. The Sun Devils most recently went to their fourth-consecutive NCAA Tournament, where they were swept by Florida State in the first round.
She is the seventh head coach in the program’s history and also the only African-American woman to be at the helm of a Division I, power-five conference team.
