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Close Up
Kress rebuilding UB volleyball team
Todd Kress strategizes with the members of the volleyball team during a recent match. Photo: PAUL HOKANSON
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“If we’re better tonight in a match than we were Saturday night, then we are doing our job and getting better.”
It’s only a month into the 2009 volleyball season, and Todd Kress, the new head coach of the UB women’s volleyball team, already has helped the team rack up more wins than it had in the past two seasons.
Kress began his head coaching career at Fairfield University, spent three years as head coach at fellow Mid-American Conference member Northern Illinois and most recently served as head coach at Florida State for six years. He has won more than 250 matches as a head coach and has led three teams to the NCAA Tournament.
Hired to rebuild the team, Kress says that taking a coaching job under UB Athletic Director Warde Manuel was a no-brainer. He credits Manuel’s vision, energy and passion for UB sports as directly affecting all of the coaches and student athletes. “We all feel the energy and passion and new direction here. That’s something I wanted to be a part of,” says Kress.
The three other college volleyball programs Kress has been associated with were all rebuilding programs, and he says he enjoys the process. His goal is to change the mindset and the expectation level, and what his team does in practice each day, focusing on getting better on the court and in the classroom. “If we’re better tonight in a match than we were Saturday night, then we are doing our job and getting better. And that’s been my goal all along,” explains Kress.
He also has developed a connection with his new team. “The student-athletes I’ve inherited are all great kids and are just tremendous,” he says. They work hard; they want to make a difference. They want to turn this thing around.”
Kress began his coaching career while attending the University of Cincinnati. While completing his undergraduate degree in broadcasting, he was a two-year starter for the Bearcats’ club squad and served as head coach for two Junior Olympic programs and as an assistant for the Seton High School junior varsity team.
Initially, Kress had plans to become a sports broadcaster. While interviewing for positions at television news stations across the country, the head coach for Thomas More College in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky, called to ask him if he wanted to be an assistant coach. Kress discovered that he loved working with student-athletes to help them meet their goals and doesn’t have any regrets about not going into broadcasting.
An Ohio native, Kress is enjoying all that Buffalo has to offer with his family, including his two sons, 8-year-old Trevor and 5-year-old Trajan. A die-hard Cleveland Browns fan, Kress also credits Buffalo’s easy drive to games in Cleveland as an added bonus to his new job.
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