MCC launches volleyball program
Oct. 20—Meridian Community College held a press conference on Thursday to announce the introduction of a volleyball program. MCC's newest team will compete in the National Junior College Athletic Association beginning next fall.
"Recently, we decided it was the right decision for Meridian Community College," MCC President Tom Huebner said. "We could not be more excited to announce that we are starting intercollegiate volleyball. It is growing like crazy in our own community, it's growing like crazy across the country, in community college circles it's huge and getting bigger."
MCC Athletic Director Sander Atkinson said the decision to start a volleyball program at MCC was influenced by the growth of local high school programs over the last four or five years. He hopes MCC's introduction of a volleyball program will serve as motivation for young athletes in the area that want to play in college to continue developing their volleyball skills.
"Once you start a new sport, one of the things that really makes it viable is to know it's healthy in the schools and the community that you serve as a community college," Atkinson said. "This was a time where the sport's gotten to a point and the college has gotten to a point where it just made sense."
MCC's volleyball rosters in the coming years will likely feature many athletes who were standout volleyball players for high schools in East Mississippi, and the program already prominently features one face familiar to many volleyball fans in Lauderdale County. Huebner announced Alex Schimelpfening as the volleyball program's inaugural head coach at the press conference.
"We've always had the idea that if any of the local colleges ever got a program, we would love to be involved in one way or another," Schimelpfening said. "We know there's a lot of really talented athletes that are hungry to continue their playing career past high school, so now that the sport is getting incredibly popular all over the country, it's probably the perfect time for MCC to step up and do that."
Schimelpfening led Lamar School's volleyball team to a second Midsouth Association of Independent Schools Division II Championship on Wednesday as an assistant coach. He has also co-owned and co-directed Queen City Athletics Volleyball Club with his wife, Courtney, Lamar's head volleyball coach, since 2019.
"After talking with Alex a little bit, it became obvious to me that he was completely capable of being our head coach," Atkinson said. "It just made a whole lot of sense with that connection they have with Queen City Volleyball and just the local volleyball community."
Schimelpfening said there was no volleyball in Meridian when his family moved to the city, but his wife was adamant that the sport should be available to young athletes in the area. They have had success developing college-level volleyball players at Queen City since then, and Schimelpfening will look to use what he learned while developing programs at Queen City and Lamar to build MCC's new volleyball program.
"We're really, really adamant about developing athletes and getting them developed as fast as we can and getting them competitive as fast as we can, and really pushing them to be uncomfortable and to get better," Schimelpfening said. "When I find athletes that are committed to learning every day and getting better every day and progressing, I think we're going to have an incredible program."
Schimelpfening said he wanted to thank Huebner and Atkinson for giving him the opportunity to get a volleyball program started at MCC, the community for the support he has received, his wife for teaching and inspiring him in the sport of volleyball and his daughter, Rylee, for supporting his decision to coach at MCC.
"Getting kids in the door and convincing them to come play volleyball I don't think is going to be difficult," Schimelpfening said. "It's just going to be getting my legs underneath me and figuring out where everything is. That'll be the hard part."
Contact Christian Knox on Twitter @TheChrisKnox
