PROVO, Utah – In his first season as the head coach of the BYU men's volleyball team, Shawn Olmstead has been named the 2016 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Coach of the Year.
Olmstead is the fourth coach at BYU to earn coach of the year honors from the MPSF, following previous head coach Chris McGown in 2013, his father Carl McGown in 1999 and 2001 and Tom Peterson in 2003.
Backed by a 26-3 overall record and an MPSF regular-season and tournament championship, the Cougars are returning to the NCAA tournament for the third time in four years after missing it a year ago.
BYU (19-3) won the regular-season title by a two-match margin (UCLA, Long Beach State and Stanford tied for second at 17-5). The Cougars defeated UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara and UCLA at the Smith Fieldhouse to win the conference tournament title.
BYU's 26 wins are second-most all time in the rally-scoring era in school history, three shy of the 29 the last national championship team that Olmstead played on (2004) collected. The team also hits at a .363 clip, second-most in school history only to the 2001 national championship team that hit .370. The hitting percentage is currently ranked No. 1 in the NCAA. The Cougars also rank first nationally in blocks per set (3.13) and RPI (.6431).
Olmstead's honors go with six Cougars who received All-MPSF accolades this year, including Ben Patch, Brenden Sander and Jake Langlois who were added to the first team.