Men’s Volleyball Program Announces New Interim Head Coach Jamie Peterson
SPRINGFIELD, OH – Coming off a dominating 3-0 sweep of Wabash in the 2025 Midwest Collegiate Volleyball League (MCVL) regular season opener on Thursday, February 27, Wittenberg Men’s Volleyball welcomes new leadership as Jamie Peterson takes the reins as interim head coach. Peterson becomes the first female head coach in the 10-year history of Wittenberg Men’s Volleyball, and she takes her place among a select few women in collegiate men’s volleyball head coaching positions nationally.
Vice President and Director of Athletics and Recreation Brian Agler named Peterson to the position after Nathan Matthews ‘19, who had served as the program’s head coach since 2021, resigned to take an assistant position with the University of Alabama’s women’s volleyball program. Peterson returns to Wittenberg after spending the 2022 and 2023 seasons on the sidelines at Pam Evans Smith Arena as an assistant coach with the Tigers’ women’s volleyball program.
“We are excited for Jamie to lead our very successful program into the future,” Agler said. “We have a talented team. Their goals as a team are the same. Jamie has great experience and has achieved at a very high level. She knows what needs to happen. I look forward to our team competing for a conference championship.
“We wish Nathan good luck as he pursues his goal of being a Division I head coach.”
Peterson was a three-time Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, Midwest Region Player of the Year, and NCAA Division 1 All-American as a student-athlete at the University of Dayton from 2016 and 2021. She went on to play professional women’s volleyball for Athletes Unlimited in 2022 and 2023 while also helping Wittenberg Women’s Volleyball to back-to-back North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Tournament titles.
A native of West Liberty, Ohio, Peterson is looking forward to the unique challenge of taking over a Wittenberg Men’s Volleyball squad in the midst of a third consecutive winning season. The Tigers won a share of the 2023 regular season MCVL championship and the outright MCVL regular season title in 2024 before coming up just short in the league’s tournament title match. Heading into the stretch run of the 2025 season, the Tigers have a 14-8 overall record and stand 1-0 in the MCVL after starting the season picked to finish second in the league.
The Tigers’ next match is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, March 14, at 12th-ranked Baldwin Wallace, the preseason MCVL favorite.
“I’m excited for the opportunity to work with this team,” Peterson said. “They have been set up for incredible success, and they are truly a very talented group of young men. I’m happy to be back at Witt, and I am ready to get to work.”
Peterson, who earned bachelor’s degrees in sport management and business administration from the University of Dayton, resides in Springfield with her husband, Zach Sprinkle, a firefighter and emergency medical technician for the City of Springfield, and their six-year-old son.
Matthews, who was a member of the first recruiting class in Wittenberg Men’s Volleyball history, helped the Tigers win their first-ever conference title as a senior in 2019, and he earned a prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. After enjoying success coaching at the high school level while an undergraduate at Wittenberg, Matthews’ first college coaching experience was as a graduate assistant with the University of Kentucky’s women’s volleyball program, including the 2020 season when the Wildcats won the NCAA Division I championship. In three-plus seasons at Wittenberg, Matthews compiled a 63-44 record, and he was named MCVL Coach of the Year in 2023 and 2024.
“I arrived on campus in the fall of 2015 as a freshman men’s volleyball player. During the recruiting process, I became enamored with the dream of introducing men’s volleyball to the incredible volleyball tradition at Wittenberg,” Matthews said. “Playing a part in building the program up to where it is today has been the greatest adventure of my life. Over the last 10 years, my experiences at Witt have formed me into the man and coach that I am today. For that, I will be forever grateful.
“Saying goodbye in this way has to be one of the most difficult things I will ever do. But how lucky am I to have been a part of something so difficult to leave? And how lucky is our program to have someone like Jamie Peterson ready to take us to that next level? Jamie has been to the highest peaks of volleyball performance. She is exactly the right person to guide these players and this team as they seek to do the same. I will be watching as a proud alumnus as Witt MVB continues this incredible rise. Tiger Up Forever!”