Southern Miss volleyball rebuilding under experienced coach
Southern Miss volleyball is embarking on a new era under Jenny Hazelwood.
The Golden Eagles made the then-SEC Network analyst their 12th head coach in December and she has since been hard at work molding her first team.
Hazelwood takes over a program that has suffered through three consecutive losing seasons.
Program building isn’t new to the former Mississippi State coach. Hazelwood coached the Bulldogs to their highest SEC finish ever at that time and took down multiple top-20 programs for the first time in MSU history.
At USM she believes she has everything in place to quickly get the Golden Eagles back to winning.
“I come in here at Southern Miss and we have a lot of talent,” Hazelwood told the Sun Herald. “Across the board we are extremely talented. So here is a situation where we get to come in and immediately do some really, really good volleyball things because we have the personnel to do it. So that’s super exciting.”
Hazelwood recently got her first competitive look at the team when USM defeated Mississippi College five sets to zero in an early April scrimmage.
The Golden Eagles honed in on Hazelwood’s key areas of focus as a coach: passing and setting. Kenzie Smith and Maddie Stayer picked up 53 assists together, helping the Golden Eagles register 65 kills in the exhibition.
“We spend a lot of time serving and passing,” Hazelwood said. “Obviously I worked at ESPN the last eight years and we ask coaches what the key to winning is and they’re all going to say serving and passing even though those are kind of the more boring skills to work on. But they’re the most important so we spend a lot of time training and passing.”
Players who are good with the fundamentals of the game are Hazelwood’s target on the recruiting trail. More importantly, athletes with strong character and willingness to buy in to the program are who the staff is in search of.
Hazelwood comes into the job with a special insight into the recruiting process. She’s worked with young players in the USA Volleyball Junior National Program and one of her daughters has recently experienced it first hand.
“It’s always good to be on the other side when it comes to the recruiting process and see what it’s like,” Hazelwood said. “The successful programs, just learning from what they do on the recruiting side has been an advantage for me coming back into the college game.
“My daughter just went through the recruiting process herself. A lot of what she did or didn’t enjoy through that, things that she was getting from different schools across the country, all of that has been very helpful to bring back to this side.”
Hazelwood hopes to bring her unique knowledge of the process and team building experience to Hattiesburg and rebuild a contender in the Sun Belt Conference.
