Former Portland State Volleyball Coach Marelene Piper Reflects on Start of Coaching Career Ahead of USA Volleyball Honor

On May 22, the woman who developed Portland State’s women’s volleyball program into a perennial contender, will receive the 2024 Bertha H. Lucas All-Time Great Coach Award from USA Volleyball. That’s the pinnacle of a 33-year volleyball coaching career which took her from Portland State to the University of California Berkeley, UC Davis and Willamette. She retired in 2001.

And it represents an extraordinary journey from when Coach Marlene Piper was hired by what was then called Portland State College in 1969 to teach health and physical education and take over the school’s relatively new women’s volleyball program.

Because, in 1969, she had absolutely no experience as a volleyball coach. In fact, her favorite sport, at which she excelled, was softball.

A Canadian national, Piper was teaching junior high and high school in the Portland suburbs when she got the invitation from (then) Portland State College. She was playing on two high-level volleyball squads in the Portland area at the time, and loved the sport. Piper had grown up doing track and field and playing softball, and played collegiately at the University of British Columbia. Her favorite sport was still softball and she was also playing locally for the Erv Lind Florists, a nationally recognized fast pitch softball team.

PSC (again, not PSU yet) had recently added volleyball to its list of intercollegiate sports and the coach was handling two sports. The added Health/PE position presented the opportunity for a single coach for women’s volleyball and women’s basketball, a significant upgrade for Viking Intercollegiate Athletics.

“There were hardly any women coaches at the University/college level, and many got assigned to a sport just to have a live person there,” Piper recalled.

Piper had strong recommendations from the volleyball coaches for whom she played. PSC wanted her to teach health and physical education as well as take over its volleyball program. She also had teaching experience and credentials. Piper took time off in 1973 and 1974 to earn her doctorate in education.

“Portland State took a chance and hired me, and I have been so grateful to them ever since.” Piper said. “I was a raw rookie in volleyball but really enjoyed the complexities of the game and, of course, the practices and tournament competitions were super. Fortunately, I was a quick volleyball learner.”

She attended every volleyball coaching clinic offered on the west coast as often as she could. And, she credited her University of British Columbia coaches and local volleyball coaches with showing her what good coaching looked like.

“The volleyball learning curve for me was amazing. I went from ‘newbie’ to better and better through the years…thanks to the amazing athletes you get to work with and my devotion to enhancing the sport, it was an upward curve,” said Piper.

During her 14 years with the Vikings, her teams went 445-106-5 and she recruited a number of All-American and Olympic Festival participants. She had the Vikings in the national (Division II) playoffs every season, finishing second in 1981 at the Division I level. Her teams also were third in 1982 and second in 1983 at the Division II level.

To some extent, Piper said she was able to attract top talent because the sport was evolving and the competition for good players wasn’t as strong as today.

“Recruiting top players today is very competitive. The camps and clinics our players put on (then), the success of the PSU teams, on campus visits, and academic opportunities were important. Coaches now can offer scholarships, review athlete tapes, watch them play in high school or club ball games and there is a large recruiting budget in every sport,” she said.

Among the top players Piper brought to PSU was Lynda Black (née Johnson), a team member from 1982-85. She was PSU’s first four-time All-American and is an inductee into the PSU Athletic Hall of Fame.

She credited Piper’s track record for good teams as drawing her to Portland State.

“Marlene developed amazing teams prior to my arrival and those teams and alumni really shaped my decision to attend Portland State,” said Black. “Marlene Piper is a teacher and technician. She helped me with my spike approach and arm swing and turned me into a setter. She starts by teaching fundamentals. She’s a great coach because she’s a great teacher. We trained a lot, and she got the best out of us physically, which made us mentally stronger. She’s also very competitive and that competitiveness is contagious.”

During her time at PSU, Black said the Vikings regularly upset top-ranked teams.

“We played the UCLA national invitational tournament every year and I remember beating some top teams, including USC. At one point, we upset top-ranked University of the Pacific to knock Pacific from the top ranking,” she said.

Amid that success, Piper was also a disciplinarian, according to Black.

 “My freshman year, we barely escaped a hurricane (on a trip to Hawaii). Some players got into a little trouble and had to face hurricane Piper,” recalled Black, who coached with Piper for a year at Cal Berkeley.

Piper’s volleyball learning curve was shortened because she was a tremendous athlete and had been coached by some top coaches, according to Teri Mariani, longtime PSU softball coach and a PSU Hall of Famer herself.

“Being the athlete she was, it didn’t take her long to learn the game and become an awesome player. She could jump out of the gym, which made her an effective outside hitter. She was hungry to learn everything about the game and became one of the best technicians of the sport. She had a passion for the game, and it was contagious with her players,” Mariani said.   

Piper really wanted to be a coach. And that dedication may have been the most important ingredient in her successful career, not the specific sport she coached.

She thinks all coaches have similar core challenges…”teaching/coaching skills, recruiting athletes, practice design, off-season skills and more…for example, if I had to coach lacrosse, I’d have a good idea what had to be done overall…but then that would have to be done specifically for lacrosse, and I don’t even know how to hold the stick!” she said.

And, Piper has been able to pass that passion for coaching along.

“The amazing PSU alumni who have followed in Marlene’s footsteps to become great teachers and coaches are a testament to her legacy,” said Black. “I was fortunate that my junior high school coach (Terry Graham) played for Marlene and my high school club coach (Carfl Neuberger) was one of Marlene’s assistants.”

From beginning to end, Piper’s teams were winners.

She finished her career with eight years at Willamette University where her teams compiled a 148-63 record with three Northwest Conference championships. She was a three-time conference Coach of the Year. Along the way, she also played on the Canadian National volleyball team and was a three-time USVBA Master’s All-American, earning MVP honors at the 1984 national tournament.

Did Piper ever have second thoughts about not coaching her first love…softball? No, she said she loved playing softball but… “PSU took a chance on hiring me. My commitment (to volleyball) never wavered. I wanted to become the best I could be for them. I never wavered. I was hooked,” she said.

And that’s why she’ll receive the 2024 Berth H. Lucas All-Time Great Coach Award from USA Volleyball on May 22 at the Hilton Polaris in Columbus, Ohio. Once out of the blocks, she gave it everything she had and never looked back.