Yellowjacket Volleyball Camps
Coaching Staff  Rick Mischka Assistant Coach- 1st Season Rick Mischka comes to Graceland via Park University where he became the fifth head coach in the history of the Park men's volleyball program and the sixth head coach in Pirate women's volleyball history, on May 13, 2009. In his first year as the women's coach at Park, Mischka led the Pirates to a 7-24 record and had two Daktronics-NAIA scholar-athletes in Bethany Buehler and Crystal Cole. In his second season however, Coach Mischka took that same Park team from a seven win season to a 19 win season. A drastic improvement from his first year. Four Pirates were also named to the Academic All-AMC team and sophomore setter Gabriela Garcia was named to the Honorable Mention All-AMC team. On the men's side in his first year leading the program, the Pirates went 16-15 overall and 8-4 in MAMVIC West play, which earned them a tie with Missouri Baptist for the MAMVIC West Conference regular season title. He also coached one of the premiere outside hitters in the NAIA game in 2010, as junior Fray Luis Fajardo Arteaga was one of only 10 players named to the American Volleyball Coaches Association, NAIA Men's Volleyball All-America Team. In his two seasons as a head women's volleyball coach, Mischka is 19-48 and including his one season as a men's head coach, his career record is, 35-63. Before Park Mischka was at Kansas Wesleyan University, where in 2008, he coached the Coyotes to a semifinal appearance in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament and five wins in the team's last nine matches of the '08 campaign. He also coached one first-team All-KCAC performer, as well as one Daktronics-NAIA Scholar Athlete in 2008. Before Kansas Wesleyan, Mischka was an assistant coach at NCAA Division-III Saint Mary's University in Winona, Minn., where he was responsible for all aspects of the program, and was a major part of the recruiting process. In his two-plus seasons at SMU, the Cardinals rebounded from a 10-19 record in 2006 to a 17-12 overall mark in 2007. Mischka has also been strongly involved in the USA Volleyball Junior Olympic program for the last five years, spending the past two with the Southern Minnesota Volleyball program. During those two years, he has served as head coach of the 17-elite team that finished the 2007 season 35-22 and was 34th out of 64 teams at the AAU Nationals in Orlando, Fla. Before Saint Mary's, Mischka was an assistant coach at Graceland University, where he worked with both the men's and women's programs for two seasons. Mischka played two years at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point where he was co-captain, player-coach and team treasurer for the Pointers' NIRSA collegiate club team. While at UWSP, he received NIRSA Club National Championships All-National Team honors as a setter. Mischka then transferred to Graceland where he played for two seasons as setter and right side hitter for the Yellow jackets before graduating in 2006 with a double-major in Philosophy and Religion. He has just obtained his Masters of Humanities degree from Tiffin University in Ohio, with a focus on Philosophy and Religious Studies.
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