Northern Arizona’s Ken Murphy Wins 100th Win As Program Head Coach

Northern Arizona is in its 44th season of sponsoring women’s varsity volleyball – long before the NCAA started recognizing it as a sport – and yet entering the 2017 season, they’d had just one head coach ever reach 100 wins with the program.

That number doubled last week, when head coach Ken Murphy led the Lumberjacks to a 3-1 win over Montana State on the road in Bozeman – the 100th of his career. Another on the weekend in Big Sky Countryr against Montana lifted him to 101, which ranks him 2nd in program history behind Kelley Silva – who won 143 across 9 seasons from 1993-2001.

It’s not that the team hasn’t had success – prior to this year, the program was almost exactly .500 in its history, with a 578-579-3 record. It’s more that coaches just haven’t stuck around long. Craig Choate, for example, the last head coach before Murphy, led the team to a 24-7 record – and then retired.

In fact, Murphy, who has the best winning percentage in program history, sits 2nd in program history among games coached already – with 145. Most coaches in program history haven’t even coached 100 games, let alone won them.

The team has won at least 19 games in each of their last 5 seasons coming into 2017, including a program-record 28-5 finish in 2015.

NAU has some work to do if they want to hit that plateau again. They’re 9-12 so far this year as they head toward a pair of weekend matchups against Sacramento State and Portland State – who sit #1 and #2, respectively, in the Big Sky South division. NAU has 6 regular season matchups left, plus a maximum of 3 conference tournament games. If they were to sneak into the NCAA tournament by running-the-table in that conference tournament, they’d still need an opening-round win to hit the 19-win plateau for a 6th-straight year.

The more immediate task is ensuring qualification for the Big Sky tournament. They currently rank 4th in the South, but still have games against each of the 3 teams ahead of them to make their stand.

NAU’s All-Time Wins History by Coach (Coach, Years, W-L-T)

1. Kelley Silva, 1993-2001, 143-104 (.579
2. Ken Murphy, 2013-Present, 101-44 (.697)
3. Craig Choate, 2008-2012, 72-60 (.545)
4. Kaprice Bray, 1980-1983, 62-53-2 (.538)
5. Kim Hudson, 1991-1992, 43-19 (.694)
6. Steve Hellman, 1987-1990, 41-69 (.373)
7. Becky Bennett, 1976-1979, 35-53 (.398)
8. Chris Campbell, 2004-2007, 31-71 (.304
9. Michelle Hansen, 2002-2003, 23-34 (.404)
10. Joyce Gedde, 1974-1975, 19-17 (.528)
11. Jan Corley, 1984-1986, 17-67-1 (.206)