
Following a second consecutive one-win season for Waynesburg University volleyball, head coach Stephanie Benkowski has resigned.
Benkowski is now the third head coach to resign from Waynesburg University Athletics in the past year and was unavailable for comment. After Benkowski left the position shortly into the new year, Larry Marshall, director of Athletics, said Waynesburg has already started the replacement process with an emphasis of hiring externally.
“We’re going to look for the best candidate that we can find and try and get them in and hired as soon as possible,” Marshall said. “This is a prime recruiting time; I don’t want it to go like [the football coaching search] where we didn’t hire anybody from an outside search.”
In the last two coaching replacements for the university head coaches were found internally, but this time Marshall said it most likely won’t be the case due, in part, to the lack of options. When head coaches were replaced for the football and track & field programs, assistant coaches with prolonged experience at Waynesburg were promoted.
While assistant coach Sara Bruschi has prolonged experience with Waynesburg University volleyball, Marshall said it is unlikely she would pursue becoming the next head coach as she already has another full-time job.
After advertising the open coaching position, Marshall said he has already received over 10 applications for the position from across the country.
“We got maybe 15 [applications],” Marshall said. “But what you end up with is some from California, some from Florida…I’d say right now there is three or four possibilities that we maybe might look at to see if they feel it merits the job.”
During the process of finding a new coach, Marshall said he wants to include members of the volleyball team while also juggling the recruits for next season.
“We want to let the young ladies meet with the prospective candidates and see what their feelings are and so on,” Marshall said. “We don’t want to lose a recruiting class, we’ve already have had a few that have been on campus.”
In addition to coaching volleyball, Benkowski was also the head coach for the women’s lacrosse team. While the volleyball coaching position is left vacant, Marshall said a possible replacement has already been found for the lacrosse program through assistant coach Gennaro Bonaventura.
“We got [Bonaventura] to help for the past couple of years [as an assistant coach] so now we’re hoping he’ll take on [head coaching], at least here in the spring,” Marshall said. “Then we’ll find out whether we need to open up and advertise to get a women lacrosse [coach].”
Through the 13 years that Benkowski coached volleyball for Waynesburg University, Marshall said she represented the university well.
“[Benkowski] did a good job; her budget was perfect,” Marshall said. “A lot of her seniors were administrators for the [Presidents’ Athletic Conference] representing Waynesburg University.”
Benkowski leaves the Waynesburg volleyball program with a 50-207 overall record and a 7-20 record with women’s lacrosse.