Alabama Volleyball Coach Rashinda Reed no Stranger to Handling Challenges

First-year coach and first-time mom has experienced life overseas, sub-zero winters in Alaska and will try to lead the Crimson Tide volleyball program to new heights.

Volleyball coach Rashinda Reed’s first season at Alabama certainly won’t be dull.

There’s going to be some big wins, tough losses and lots and lots of diaper changes.

Reed gave birth to her first child, Lucas, just four weeks ago, and is already back on the job to guide the Crimson Tide for the 2022 season, which begins Friday in the Crimson Tide Invitational.

Alabama hosts McNeese State at Foster Auditorium at 12:30 p.m. and the University of Texas at San Antonio at 7 p.m. The Crimson Tide faces Southern Miss on Saturday at 3 p.m.

“It’s been good. For the most part he’s a pretty easy baby,” Reed said.

The timing of welcoming a newborn isn’t ideal, but Reed said she’s well prepared.

"Coaching prepares you for anything,” Reed said. “Well, it can’t prepare you for being a mother, but it can prepare you for juggling time. The big part of it is I have an amazing support system. My partner is here and helpful with our child and is a support system for me as a coach. That's the big thing, to have people around you that want to see you thrive.”

Reed has been in coaching since 2009. She had head coaching jobs with Southern Indiana and Northern Michigan, and was an assistant coach at UAB, Binghamton, Northwestern, and most recently, Illinois.

Before her career path steered toward coaching, Reed took a detour after college and went to Europe, where she played professional volleyball for five years.

It started with studying abroad in Budapest,” said Reed, who earned her degree from the University of Georgia. “I really loved to travel and volleyball was a way to do that. It was appealing to me because I wasn’t ready to grow up yet. The opportunity to play kept coming and I ended up playing for four or five years.”

It wasn’t necessarily the volleyball that kept her overseas. Reed said she is a “people person,” and building relationships with folks from various cultures from different countries was an amazing experience.

She said each country offered something different and unique. Reed learned something new at every stop. She even learned to speak some German and Hungarian.

“I might be able to count, say yes or no and maybe a few curse words here or there, but that’s about it,” Reed said of her present-day foreign language skills.

Reed is used to living in unique places. She grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where the sun never sets in the spring, summer temperatures are in the 70s and winter temperatures can hit well below freezing.

“When I was there, we had temperatures of 70 below,” Reed said. “That’s unheard of now. It’s more in the 40 below range.”

Reed’s volleyball playing career took off when she met her mentor, who arrived in Alaska from “The Lower 48” with her husband. She took Reed under her wing and ignited a passion in Reed for volleyball.

Reed’s hoping to ignite that same passion for members of the Crimson Tide. She’s trying to erase the memories of last year’s 10-20 finish and begin a new chapter for Alabama volleyball.

“They are all hungry and have a drive to want to get better,” Reed said. “The biggest thing with working with women is trust. Within the recruiting process, especially how they were recruited—they were recruited years before coming to Alabama. With women it’s not easy to establish that trust right away. You build it over time. The fact they welcomed us when we got here was a big deal. It’s a huge part of the transition we’ve made so far. They bought in, trusted in us that we were here to help them have a great experience in college and also understand we want to help them be the best they can be and build of a program they can be proud of.”