Penn State celebrates rare volleyball feat

When Penn State defeated Pepperdine to win the NCAA men's volleyball championship, it marked only the second time that a school claimed NCAA men's and women's titles in the same year.

Stanford accomplished it in 1997.

The Nittany Lions men's team rallied in Irvine, Calif., to beat Pepperdine, 27-30, 33-31, 30-25, 30-23.

"This replaces the 1972 Dairy Little League championship for me," Penn State coach Mark Pavlik said. "I'm really just the caretaker of this program. To give this team the opportunity to play their best at the highest level, it's rewarding to me. These guys played better than I coached, that's for sure."

Penn State defeated Stanford on Dec. 15 to win the NCAA women's volleyball title.

Nittany Lions teams have won four NCAA championships in the past 14 months, also capturing titles in fencing and men's gymnastics.

Playoff-bound

Six district schools earned bids to the NCAA softball playoffs.

California (Pa.), Lock Haven, Slippery Rock and Shippensburg open play Wednesday in the Division II Mid-Alantic regional at Kutztown. Bethany (W.Va.) and Penn State-Behrend play first-round games Thursday in the Division III Ithaca regional.

Elsewhere, Washington & Jefferson will play host to the ECAC Division III softball tournament Saturday and Sunday as a No. 2 seed. The Presidents were awarded home-field advantage after top-seeded Misericordia announced it was unable to serve as host.

Coaching carousel

California (Pa.) didn't look far to find a replacement for longtime women's basketball coach Darcie Vincent.

Heather Kearney will succeed Vincent as coach of the Vulcans, who won an NCAA Division II championship in 2004, after serving as associate head coach the past four years.

Kearney, who's Slippery Rock's all-time leading scorer (1,760 points) and its second-leading rebounder (949), was a member of Vincent's coaching staff over the past eight years, when California (Pa.) played in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship game each season.

Vincent resigned last month to take over as coach at Appalachian State.

At Youngstown State, new coach Cindy Martin, the former Indiana (Pa.) coach, completed her staff with the appointment of assistants Jen Duhnke and Shannon Sword.

Duhnke spent last season as Martin's top assistant at IUP, while Sword is a former assistant at Ashland who starred as a player at Cleveland State.

District musings

Junior Matt Wright became the Shippensburg single-season strikeout leader and just the third pitcher in PSAC history to record 300 career strikeouts during a loss to West Chester last week.

• Mercyhurst athletics director Craig Barnett will take over as interim commissioner of College Hockey America, succeeding R.H. "Bob" Peters, who resigned, effective June 30, after serving in the position for the past seven years. Since 2002, the CHA men's regular-season trophy has been called the R.H. "Bob" Peters Cup.

• Lock Haven junior Kristin Erb pitched her third perfect game of the season, as the NCAA Division II third-ranked Eagles defeated No. 8 Bloomsburg, 3-0, in the first round of the PSAC Tournament. Erb's other two perfect games came against Clarion (March 30) and Edinboro (April 25).