Penny Lucas-White

Former U.S. National Team member Penny Lucas-White has just concluded her eighth season as the head volleyball coach at Alabama State University.

Shedraws her coaching expertise from an impressive playing career at the collegiate, national and international levels, as well as coaching some of the top scholar-athletes in the nation.

Career highlights include:
– Played at LSU (1980-83) and as a professional, domestically and internationally (1984-91, 1997)
– Played as a member of the U.S. National Volleyball Team (1985-86)
– Spent 26 seasons as a coach, 16 as a college head coach (Memphis 1991-95, Air Force Academy 1996-2009, Alabama State 2011-present)
Coached athletes that earned MIT, Rhodes and Alberta Bart Holaday Scholarships
– Guided the Lady Hornets four SWAC championships
Four-time conference coach of the year (twice at Memphis, twice at ASU)

During her tenure at the helm for the Lady Hornets, Lucas-White has upgraded the nonconference schedule to include trips against some of the top teams in the country.

Lucas-White has always emphasized work in the classroom and that has not changed since she arrived on the ASU campus. Following the 2012-13 season, the volleyball team received the Large Team Academic Award at the ASU Athletic Banquet based on the overall team grade point average.

As head coach at Memphis, Lucas-White led the program to back-to-back Great Midwest Conference titles in 1993 and 1994, earning Coach of the Year honors both seasons. Her Lady Tiger squads maintained a 3.0 team GPA during her tenure at Memphis.

Lucas-White took the reins at Air Force Academy in 1996, the school’s first season competing in Division I in the highly competitive Western Athletic Conference (now known as the Mountain West Conference). A total of 18 cadet-athletes earned academic All-Mountain West Conference honors, including one Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Among her community involvement, Lucas-White has been an active member of the American Volleyball Coaches Association. In 2003, she helped the AVCA receive an NCAA minority coaches grant for a program entitled “Volleyball: Live it! Love it! Coach It!”

She earned first-team All-SEC honors, as well as the MVP award, in her first season playing at LSU. After a three-year career, she left college to begin her professional playing career domestically in the United States Volleyball League and internationally in Italy and Germany.

While competing professionally in the United States and Europe, Lucas-White began her coaching career as an assistant coach at Auburn from 1987-89.

Lucas-White earned the honor of playing on the United States National Volleyball Team in the 1985 NORCECA (North, Central America and Caribbean) Games, competing against the best players in the world.