Jessica Casey

Jessica Casey has been the Merced Colleges head coach since 2004.  She was a four-year collegiate volleyball athlete, first at Otero Junior College in La Junta, Colorado, later at Huron University in Huron, South Dakota.  She graduated with a B.S. in Secondary History Education with a minor in coaching.  She learned quickly the hard way.  As her first experience, she was hired at NAIA Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma to initiate the school’s first ever volleyball team. At Bacone, besides coaching the team, she handled team organization, purchasing, recruiting, travel arrangements as well as being in charge of all intramural activities.  With her hard knocks experience at Bacone she returned to her home state of Colorado, where she was hired to coach volleyball at Lamar Community, a bitter rival of her alma mater Otero.  After two years she left the security of a full-time position at Lamar for the adventure of the unknown: an adjunct head coach position at Merced College, where her fiancé (now husband, Bob) played JC football and was returning to coach football and track.  She blended well with the circumstance and was hired as a full-time professor and coach within a year.  “The best part of coaching at the community college level,” she says, “is the fact we get to prepare the athletes for the next steps in life, athletically and academically.” Along with her coaching, she immediately began work on a Master’s Degree in Human Performance and Sport from New Mexico Highlands.  She looks forward to coaching younger athletes at Turlock Crush this year as she and her assistant coach Rosanna Miller switch roles.  Jessica lives in Merced with her husband and two children who keep her busy on all sorts of fields watching them pursue their athletic dreams.