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GREENFIELD — He hasn’t been with them long, but Jon Vernon knows his Greenfield-Central volleyball team is resilient.
They have had to be.
Vernon was announced as the program’s head coach on Monday.
He is Greenfield-Central’s fourth volleyball coach since the beginning of last season.
Coach Ron Heck left the program during the middle of the 2021 season. Assistant athletic director Elizabeth Mercer took over on an interim basis to finish out the season.
The school hired former Shenandoah head coach Josh MacIntyre as the full-time replacement, but he had to resign for personal reasons this summer.
Vernon was offered the job last week and was in the gym Monday to meet his new team.
“The kids are good kids and they are working hard. That’s all I can ask for,” Vernon said. “It hasn’t been that tough coming in when you have kids that want to get better and work hard. It makes it easier to do your job and do what you need to get accomplished.”
Considering their situation, the Cougars are ecstatic to get a coach with Vernon’s experience and success.
He spent the last seven seasons at Benton Central High School, winning Class 3A sectional titles in 2016 and 2020.
They had won between 24 and 26 matches in each of the last four seasons and had a combined mark during that time of 101-26.
“We’re excited about getting him,” Greenfield-Central athletic director Jared Manning said. “When things went the way with coach MacIntyre having to step away it put us in a tough spot. We all knew that. We were fortunate to have coach Vernon apply. He meets a lot of what we want to have happen with our volleyball program.”
Prior to Benton Central, Vernon spent two seasons as the head volleyball coach at Logansport and was formerly the head baseball coach at both Benton Central and Delphi. He played high school baseball at Logansport and was part of the Berries 1989 state runner-up team.
With just a handful of days with his new volleyball team, the new coach is still getting to know players and vice versa. He has liked what he’s seen, but knows there’s a lot of work to do.
“They’ve had a lot of change from the last year or so,” Vernon said of the Cougars. “They’re pretty resilient. They’ve kind of just moved on and have done a really good job of starting to buy in to what I want to do. It’s a lot different from what has been done here before.”
Vernon said a key to his success at Benton Central was building a quality feeder system from the elementary school on up. He wants to do similar things at G-C, but it will take time.
There is still the need to hire assistant coaches. New junior high coaches were hired this summer, too.
On the court, Vernon believes it will be important to be a strong passing team. He said they have already been working a lot on serve receive and will need to pass well to play his preferred fast-paced offense.
“We’ll get there eventually. They’re going to have to get there,” Vernon said. “I am real happy with the way things have started. For the first three days things seem to be going in a positive way.”
Being closer to home was an attractive factor in seeking the Greenfield-Central job, Vernon said. He lives in Whitestown, in Boone County and had well over one-hour commutes to Benton Central, located in Oxford.
“It’s been a breath of fresh air,” Vernon said of his first week with the Greenfield-Central team.
“Up until last week I was working with our kids at Benton Central,” the coach added. “Coming down here, the kids have been really good, really resilient of what has happened in the last year or so. It’s really been very pleasant with everything we’ve been doing with open gyms.”
Greenfield-Central finished 9-18 last season. They graduated setter Morgan Hornaday, one of only two seniors on the team, who is now playing NCAA Division I volleyball at Gardner-Webb in Boiling Springs, N.C.
Most of last year’s team members were either freshmen or sophomores. Emma Berty, a 6-foot middle hitter, is the only returning senior.
The first official practice will be Aug. 1. The Cougars first match is a 10 a.m. home contest on Aug. 13 against Waldron.
“We have some talent,” Vernon said. “We have to figure out how to utilize that talent and make them understand they have to raise their game just a little bit.”
