PCCC Appoints Linda Hicks the First Head Coach for Men’s Volleyball

Linda Hicks, an athletics coach with strong ties to PCCC and the Paterson athletics community, has been named head coach for Men’s Volleyball, a sport that will have its inaugural season at PCCC in spring 2022, thanks to a $10,000 grant opportunity from the NJCAA Foundation and First Point Volleyball Foundation.

“A new era for men’s volleyball at PCCC is now a reality, and Coach Hicks will be at the helm to usher in this emerging sport in the spring,” says Wayne R. Martin, PCCC’s Director of Athletics, who announced the appointment this week. “Coach Hicks possesses strong leadership ability, as well as community and organizational ties to attract and recruit quality men and women volleyball student-athletes to PCCC.”

Linda Hicks has been head coach of PCCC’s Women’s Volleyball program since 2019 and will continue in that role while taking on her new position.  “I am honored to be chosen as head coach for Men’s Volleyball and look forward to seeing how the program and the sport of volleyball will become bigger every year” says Coach Hicks.

A lifelong Paterson resident, Ms. Hicks attended  Paterson Catholic High School where she  was a three-sport Varsity First-Team, All-County athlete in volleyball, basketball, and track. She was captain of the three teams, holds records in all the sports, and was also invited, at age 16, to the Olympic Training Camp.

Ms. Hicks earned a bachelor’s degree at Muhlenberg College where she holds three volleyball records (for kills, blocks and spikes), won Conference Championship, was MVP 11 times, and had a successful basketball experience, as well.

From 1996 to 2017, Ms. Hicks coached both volleyball and basketball at Eastside High School in Paterson, where she was also head coach of the girls’ volleyball team, producing All- League and All-County players each year, an accomplishment that gained recognition for the team. 

While at Eastside that Coach Hicks noticed the lack of volleyball opportunities for boys in Paterson, a contrast to what she had observed elsewhere. Prior to choosing Muhlenberg, she visited Notre Dame and other Division 1 programs that had accepted her and saw that “at top colleges and universities across the country, men’s volleyball teams were flourishing and offering scholarship opportunities to men who had been exposed to the sport.”
 
When she returned to Paterson, Coach Hicks started a boys volleyball program at Eastside and trained her assistant to run a boys program at John F. Kennedy High School. She then enlisted the support of other local coaches. “Those programs are still going strong today,” she says.

Now Coach Hicks looks forward to another inaugural experience as she assumes the helm for a new sport at PCCC this spring.

 “To be a part of this growth, this history and this transition is exciting,” says Coach Hicks. “Introducing Men’s Volleyball at PCCC will be pivotal in the expansion of Men’s Sports in Paterson, at the College, and in the League and will also provide more opportunities that were not there before for male student athletes.”   Congratulations Coach Hicks!

For more information about Men’s Volleyball and other athletics programs at PCCC, visit pccc.edu/athletics or contact Athletics Director Wayne Martin at 973-754-9712 or [email protected]