Phelan Who's Best

Fayetteville volleyball coach Jessica Phelan was an All-American at Arkansas as was her husband, Darren Phelan, who will coach Fayetteville's tennis team this season. The 31-year-old Jessica Phelan piloted her team to the state championship game last season and has an in-home race for a first state title now with her hubby chasing the same goal in his sport. Vype: So I understand your husband Darren is going to be a Fayetteville High coach next year also, is that going to be a unique situation for you guys to be on campus together all the time? Phelan: Well, it will be a change, him coming from the University where he travels all the time, to us going to work together seeing each other all the time. It will be a change, but one we are looking forward to. Our oldest son Tyler is starting school this year and I know he is excited to be able to be around more. Vype: How old are your kids? Phelan: Tyler is 5, Kennedy is 3 and Lucas is 1. Thank goodness for his mother, (Diane) she watches our kids three days a week and helps out a lot around the house, does laundry and such. She is a Godsend. Being a working mom and coaching it can be pretty hard to try to balance out all the areas it certainly helps to know your kids are with someone who loves them as much as you do everyday. Vype: Tell us about your career, you started at Little Herman, Mo., and ended up an All-American at Arkansas? Phelan:I played for Linda Birk, who is one of the winningest coaches in Missouri and then ended up at Arkansas when they were first starting the program. I remember coming on a recruiting trip and it was their first year for volleyball. 'Here is where the locker room is going to be' and things like that. It was just really exciting to be able to come to a program where you were going to be starting it. Playing for (former UA) coach (Chris) Poole was such a blessing in my life. He remains a good friend in my life. It was a really special time and I ended up having a great career. A lot of it had to do with who I was playing around, just a good group of girls. I just feel very fortunate about the opportunity. Vype: What was your fondest memory in college? Phelan: Definitely when we won the SEC Tournament, beating Florida, because we had been banging on that door for so long, finishing second in the conference, and my junior year being able to finally beat them in the tournament was a sweet moment. We beat them in three for the championship and that put us in the top 15 in the country. I blocked the match point ... that was awesome. Vype: You had coach Poole and coach Kirk to draw from, do you pull things from both to help with your coaching philosophy? Phelan: I feel really blessed playing for them and then my junior year I had the opportunity to train with the National Team and at the time the National Team was being coached by Coach (Toshi) Yoshida, and I got to come out there early and train with the team most of the summer, so I feel like to do take some of the philosophies of all three of those coaches. Now I have been doing it long enough to have some of my own philosophies, when you start your coaching career you do things like the people who helped you and as a coach you start to see what works for your team and what works for you personally. Certainly, I feel like that foundation helped prepare me for coaching. Vype: What is your philosophy in a nutshell? Phelan: What we want to do is get better everyday in the gym, we work a lot of solidifying our ball control and then we want to look at ways as a team to maximize our effectiveness in each rotation. We do a lot in drills like that. Really as a philosophy just as a program, we want to train kids to love volleyball. If they enjoy it, then they are out there working hard, so we want them to love the game as much as we do. Vype: How do you train kids to love the game? Phelan: We do a lot of different stuff. I think everyone loves to compete and win, so we put a lot of things like that into our practices. We don't just do drills to do drills. We tell them they need to accomplish something then you are out of the drill. We put them in situations where they are competing against each other, and then in the offseason, we try to do some fun stuff. We have a week where we have a sticker war, where they are doing all sorts of competitions and whoever has the most stickers at the end of the week is sticker war champion. Vype: Who did you get sticker war from? Phelan: I got it from my high school coach. They always did sticker war as part of volleyball camp every summer. It sounds cheesy, seriously, but the girls go at it after those stickers. Vype: What do you think about this years team? Phelan: What I really like about this group is you can be so proud to be associated with them on a daily basis. They are all champions, not just when it comes to volleyball, but when it comes to the classroom, sometimes you wish you could take stock in kids and you could be a rich woman these are kids that are going to be successful through out their lives not just on the court. You can be really proud of the choices they make and when it comes to volleyball, I know they are going to give it their all. We are looking forward to this season, we want to get better everyday. At this point of the year everyone is going in wanting to win a state championship that's the last step on the ladder for us. We went to the final four two years ago, and last year we made our first appearance in the state championship game. Our theme for the year is 'Hungry dogs hunt best.' Being that close, being five points away from a state championships certainly motivates your kids in the offseason, so they are going to give it their best shot and that's all a coach can ask for.