NMJC finds first volleyball coach

NM native spent past four seasons building regional title team

JASON FARMER NEWS-SUN
Sunday January 20, 2019

Volleyball is coming to New Mexico Junior College.

When the 2019-20 school year gets underway, volleyball will join the list of sports offered at NMJC. Guiding the Lady Thunderbirds as the first-year program gets underway will be Alexandra Lehocky.

Lehocky spent the past four years as an assistant coach for the Northeastern Junior College Lady Plainsmen in Sterling, Colo. In those four seasons, the Lady Plainsmen went a combined 93-52, while winning the Region IX Championship last season.

"It is an honor. It is a huge honor," Lehocky said. "It is a very big accomplishment. I am originally from New Mexico, so I have known for many, many years we need to get a volleyball program at New Mexico Junior College and having the opportunity to grow the program and establish it, it is an honor."

Aside from helping to start a program, one of the things that drew Lehocky to the NMJC was the school always puts a team on the field or court or track that has a chance to win and fight for championships.

"I know how successful they are and how much they support athletics," she said. "… I am actually using the other sports as a recruiting tool. It is a first-year program and the kids have nothing to go off of. They have my past up in Colorado, but this is a totally different team and area and type of volleyball. I tell them the other teams here are successful here and I expect to be successful."

The opportunity to coach NMJC's newest team was one several coaches were interested in. NMJC Athletic Direct Deron Clark said he and school president Kelvin Sharp were impressed with Lehocky when they met her and her vision for now and the future.

"Dr. Sharp and I both feel that, for us to get an individual of (Lehocky's) experience and quality, to get this program up and running is really fortunate," Clark said. "We were unsure when the process started what we would have the opportunity to hire. We had some really, really, strong candidates. (Lehocky) just brings a lot of volleyball knowledge and some really solid planning about how our program should get started and how she intends to do that."

Lehocky has New Mexico ties. She is a graduate of Moriarty High School and helped the Lady Pintos win the 2007 and 2008 NMAA Class 4A state championships.

When the Lady T-Birds take the court at Caster Activity Center for conference games, they will be in the Western Junior College Athletic Conference and assigned to Region V. Conference games are scheduled for Wednesdays and Saturdays.

There is no set number of games the Lady T-Birds' volleyball team will be allowed to play during the season. Instead, the team will be able to play games on a maximum number of days. When the season starts, the Lady T-Birds will be allowed to play games on up to 28 days. To get more matches in, the Lady T-Birds can play in tournaments on those days or set up triangular matches with multiple matches set up on a given day.

Speaking of tournaments, Lehocky has already booked the new team in three tournaments next year. NMJC will play tournaments in Arizona and New Mexico Military Institute. The third is a return trip for Lehocky to Sterling, for a tourney hosted by Northeastern.

"Those are very, very good tournaments," she said. "They are very high ranked teams. To get ranked in volleyball, to get nationally noticed, you have to play the ranked teams."

As a first year head coach, Lehocky will help get the Lady Thunderbirds' new volleyball program up and running. Those four years in Colorado helped in terms of gaining experience.

"I learned so much from everyone at Northeastern," the Lady T-Birds' coach said. "I worked under Marci Henry who is a hall of fame volleyball coach. She was our AD up there and then I had the pleasure of working under Jessica Squier. … Working under coach Squier, she taught me a lot about the individual details of volleyball. She really opened my eyes about how to break down movements in volleyball."

There is still a lot for Lehocky to do before the Lady T-Birds' volleyball team takes to the court for its first game or its first practice. As the 2018-19 school winds down, Lehocky's focus will be on recruiting and building a schedule.

"I am looking forward to seeing the team that I put together," she said. "Right now they are all very little individual pieces that I am trying to put together with recruiting, but I am excited to see them fit together as a team."