Coach Gayle Stammer joined the Lady Penguins volleyball program for the 2010 season. She comes to Dominican from NCAA Division III Lewis and Clark College in Portland where she was assistant volleyball coach and recruiting coordinator since 2008. The Pioneers won 14 of their last 21 games last season to finish in third place in the Northwest Conference.
Prior to Lewis and Clark, Stammer, a native of Livermore, was assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., head coach at St. Mary’s Academy, a Catholic all-girls college preparatory high school in Portland, and head coach at Cabrillo College in Aptos from 2002-06. Stammer also was an assistant coach in 2001 at De Anza College in Cupertino.
Stammer was a successful club coach as well. During her five-year stint with City Beach Volleyball Club in Santa Clara, she coached her team to the silver medal in the 18 Open Division in 2002. Stammer then helped start the Main Beach Volleyball Club in Aptos and, by 2004-05, she coached its 17s and 18s teams to the Junior Nationals. In 2007, Main Beach’s U-18 team won a Junior Nationals gold medal.
USC’s Jessica Gysin, Stanford’s Karissa Cook and Kat Brown of Cal are among current players that Stammer coached in club volleyball.
A junior college first team All-American player at St. Philips College in Texas, Stammer went on to play at NCAA Division I Louisiana State University where she received All Southeastern Conference honors in 1983 and helped lead the Tigers to the SEC tournament finals. She was a middle hitter and led the team in blocks her senior year.
After LSU, Stammer played in the Italian Professional Volleyball League for three years. She returned to the Bay Area in 1989 when she was a draft choice of the San Jose Golddiggers in the inaugural season of Major League Volleyball.
Stammer soon after shifted her focus to beach volleyball and competed for 13 seasons on the professional circuit including a brief stint with her sister, Wendy, on the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) Tour. She was ranked among the top 10 players in the United States and, with playing partner Janice Opalinski-Harrer, made a strong run to the Final Four of the U.S. Olympic Beach Volleyball trials in Baltimore, Md. in 1996 before losing. Stammer was an alternate for the 1996 Atlanta Olympiad.
All told, Stammer has more than 20 years of playing experience and about 15 years of coaching experience.
