WAYNE — The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) announced Thursday that Wayne State College volleyball coach Scott Knievel has been named the Division II National Coach of the Year.
Knievel will be formally presented with the National Coach of the Year award in person Thursday at the AVCA Awards ceremony in Tampa, Fla., at the NCAA Division I Final Four.
This season, Knievel coached the Wildcats to a 31-3 record.
Wayne State captured its second straight Northern Sun Conference regular season title going 18-0 in NSIC play.
The Wildcats are on a 21-game winning streak this season — the second-longest winning streak in school history — and are ranked No. 1 in the AVCA/TARAFLEX Division II Coaches Top 25 poll for a school-record nine straight weeks.
Wayne State last weekend captured its second NCAA Central Region title with wins over No. 15 Minnesota Duluth (3-0), No. 13 Nebraska Kearney (3-2) and No. 2 Concordia-St. Paul (3-1) is in the championship game to advance to the NCAA Elite Eight for the second time in school history.
On Thursday, Wayne State fell to Cal State Los Angeles (3-2) in the quarterfinals of the national tournament in Moon Township, Pennsylvania.
Under Kneifl, Wayne State’s second straight regular season title this year marks the first time a team in the NSIC has captured back-to-back league titles since Concordia-St. Paul won eight straight NSIC titles from 2003-2010.
The perfect 18-0 league mark for the year by the Wildcats marked the first time since Minnesota Duluth in 2014 (20-0) that the team went into Northern Sun Conference play undefeated.
This season, Kneifl was also voted the Northern Sun Conference Coach of the Year for the second straight season and fourth time overall (2005, 2009, 2022, 2023) along with the AVCA Central Region Coach of the Year for the second straight year.
Knievel has coached Wayne State to 30 straight wins — 30-3 last season — and the Wildcats have been nationally ranked for 17 straight seasons.
In his 19th year as coach, Knievel coached the Wildcats to records of 451-145 and 261-87 in Northern Sun Conference play. His 450th career win came last Friday in the Wildcats’ 3-2 NCAA Central Region semifinal win over Nebraska-Kearny. Kneifl has led Wayne State to 20-win seasons in 18 of his 19 years on the Wildcat bench — 19-12 in 2017 — and has led the Wildcats to 13 NCAA National Tournament appearances, two NCAA Central Region titles, and two Northern Sun Conference titles as a regular season titles, one NSIC championship (2007) and an NCAA Final Four appearance in 2015.