Eastern volleyball promotes from within
Miles Kydd had a fallback employment opportunity, but he was really hoping he wouldn’t have to go that route.
The four-year assistant volleyball coach at Eastern Washington University was officially promoted Thursday to be the Eagles’ head coach. Kydd was one of 35 applicants. Six were interviewed by telephone and three finalists were brought to the Cheney campus for face-to-face interviews.
Kydd was the head coach at the University of Regina, his alma mater, from 1994-2002. He was Team Canada’s head coach at the 1999 World Student Games and served as assistant coach for Team Canada at the 1999 Pan American Games, the 1991 and 1989 World Cup and the 1990 World Championships.
Kydd joined EWU’s staff under former head coach Wade Benson, who left roughly seven weeks before the 2007 season opener to become an assistant coach at Auburn. Benson, now Auburn’s head coach, had talked with Kydd about joining the Tigers’ program.
“But I’m 48 years old and it depends on what your perspective is,” Kydd said. “I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to keep chasing around assistant coaching jobs. He talked to me about it, but he knew I was interested in this job and I wanted to let it play out.”
It couldn’t have played out any better, Kydd said. “I felt good about my interview and my performance on the job, but you’re never really sure. I was definitely surprised and happy and excited. This is an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often. I’m just excited to get to it and get cracking.”
Kydd and Eagles assistant Rebecca Wood have overseen the program during the coaching search, at the request of athletic director Bill Chaves.
“For the past four years, coach Kydd has demonstrated the ability to recruit and coach at a very high level at Eastern, and I believe that he will continue the great tradition that coaches Pam Parks and Wade Benson have established for Eastern volleyball,” Chaves said in an EWU release.
Irene Matlock, hired as interim coach roughly five weeks before the 2007 season opener, applied for the job and went through the interview process. EWU was 15-15 overall, 12-4 in the Big Sky Conference under Matlock.
“Eastern Washington is a great place with great people working there,” said Matlock, a tenured instructor at Community Colleges of Spokane. “With my situation, there’s a lot of security right now and that’s just really hard to give up.”
Kydd said the Eagles are positioned to make a run at the Big Sky championship next season. The program has a commitment from Cora Kellerman, daughter of former University of Idaho men’s basketball standout Brian Kellerman.
“We have a really strong core of players returning and we were really young last year,” Kydd said. “Our goal is to start hanging up (championship) banners.”