Cheri Lindsay, a 2012 Prairie View A&M University grad, has returned to campus as the school’s new head volleyball coach.
Lindsay, the Denver, Colo. native and a former star volleyball player at her alma mater (2008-11), is a proven program builder at every stop in her coaching journey for nearly a decade. She took over in 2020 an East Central (Okla.) University program that had won only two matches in two years. It had been over a dozen years since the team posted a winning record. Lindsay recorded her first winning campaign in 2021.
We recently caught up with Lindsay, who told us she took the PVAMU job in early March because she was primed for a new challenge.
“We had done great,” she pointed out. “We made them into a playoff contender in one year. A lot of work was done, and I love my team. But if you want to move up, you have to keep trying to get better. You have to keep challenging yourself as a coach.
“This was just a good time for me,” continued Lindsay, of her leaving East Central. “Building a program and just really boosting the program from where it was, I just felt like I did everything that I really could do there.”
“What better place to be able to come back to your alma mater,” said Lindsay, who is proud to be back at Prairie View in Texas. “Being able to come to a bigger place, a bigger city, more opportunities.”
Coaching is in her blood, but Lindsay admitted she had tried to deny it. After serving as a student coach (2011-12) in her senior year at PVAMU, she was looking towards playing pro volleyball overseas.
“Actually, a week before I was about to graduate, I got a call from one of my old coaches,” Lindsay recalled. “She was like, ‘Hey, I have an opportunity for you… Come out here to Ohio. You can be my assistant coach full-time. You get your masters and pay for it.”
“I had turned her down because I was going overseas. I asked my dad and he said, ‘No, you are going to Ohio.’
Lindsay packed up her playing desires and went to Tiffin (Ohio) University, where she served as an assistant coach for two seasons (2012-14), and earned two master’s degrees in education and business administration. Listening to her father was the right thing, Lindsay reflected.
From Tiffin, Lindsay went to Bethany (KS) College as head coach and assistant athletic director (2015-18), then an assistant position at Seattle University (2018-20), before landing at ECU three seasons ago as the school’s third-ever head volleyball coach.
Arriving on campus in mid-March, “I kind of rushed in down here, accepted a job on the third of March, and I was here by the 10th,” said Lindsay. “I needed to get here in time to evaluate everybody.
“I think it’s only fair as a coach [to] come in and evaluate because you want to see if there might be somebody you really, really like. I’ve never been a huge fan of coaches coming in and cleaning house.
“So, you come in and give yourself time to evaluate everybody, give everybody a fair shake if they can fit into your program, and then you go from there.”
The new coach almost immediately made her presence known. “We have practice at six am,” stressed Lindsay. “I’m there at five, and I’m gonna be sitting right at the front making sure you’re here at 5:30 because it’s a new set of standards…a different level of expectations.”
Lindsay’s competitive, no-nonsense attitude comes naturally: “I have three brothers. All of them played college football, one of them playing in the NFL. My sister plays college basketball. Both my dad and uncle also are coaches. We had a very, very competitive, aggressive household, but definitely that [competitiveness] comes from my dad’s side of the family.”