Shane came back
All Volleyball! exclusive: Davis thankful to get second opportunity as Ramblers coach; Loyola was lucky to snag him
An improbable row of dominoes had to fall, some at the highest level of American volleyball, for prodigal son Shane Davis to land back at the helm of the NCAA men’s volleyball program he once led to unprecedented greatness.
First Jamie Davis resigned as president and CEO of our national governing body, USA Volleyball. Then John Speraw was hired as Davis’ successor. Then Karch Kiraly moved from directing the USA women’s national team to guiding our men’s squad, replacing Speraw, who also resigned as coach of the UCLA men’s program.
Then John Hawks bolted to take the UCLA coaching job, stepping down as coach at Loyola, where he had worked for two years.
Then, and only then, could Davis, the former “kid coach” be reunited with the Loyola men’s program. That whirlwind of activity all transpired within a six-week period from late September to early November.
Davis began his first run at the North Side Jesuit school as a highly decorated player (second-team All-American setter as a senior) from 2000 to '03. In a scenario as unlikely as the present one, he landed the job as the program’s coach straight out of college, filling the vacancy left when Tim O’Brien jumped from the Loyola men’s to its women’s team in 2004.
A few years older than his players, fresh-faced Shane led the Ramblers to four consecutive 20-win seasons. A native of Denver, Iowa (population 1,919 in the 2020 census), he became a fixture in the large-but-close-knit Chicago volleyball community, remaining active as an adult player indoors, on the grass and on the beach. To this day, Loyola athletes are employed by the Chicago Sport and Social Club putting up nets for its leagues during the summer, a relationship kindled by Davis.
During his tenure, Loyola transitioned from playing its home matches at historic-but-intimate Alumni Gym to the 4,500-seat Gentile Arena, with extensive renovations to the former Gentile Center completed in 2011. The pinnacle of success for his Ramblers came in 2014, when they won the NCAA title before a jammed-to-the-rafters crowd on their home floor, defeating Stanford in the final. A year later, Shane’s crew made it back-to-back crowns, pulling out an incredible five-setter against Chicago-area and Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association rival Lewis U. of Romeoville in a title match considered among the best in the sport’s history.
No longer a kid, but still in his 30s, Davis’ NCAA champs not only went 29-1 and 28-2, his program developed two players who would go on to earn Olympic medals representing the red-white-and-blue. Outsider hitter Thomas Jaeschke is a three-time Olympian with bronzes in 2016 and 2024. Jeff Jendryk was a member of the bronze-medal squad last summer in Paris.
In a shocking moved at the time, Davis left Loyola to coach the women’s team at Northwestern in the high-profile Big 10 days before the Ramblers’ 2016 season was to begin. He remained in Evanston until a “mutual parting of the ways” took place in December of 2023. Hypersensitive after suffering a public-relations nightmare in a hazing scandal earlier in the year that led to longtime football coach Pat Fitzgerald’s firing, Davis got caught up in the fallout when former volleyball players in a lawsuit cited a hazing incident in 2021.
The coach went into the private sector during the intervening months, working alongside his wife, Andrea, in the real-estate business. “We were going to make a career of it, and were doing well with it right out of the gates,” Shane told All Volleyball!
But then the dominoes fell that left Loyola without a men’s volleyball coach, and, fortuitously, Davis was available.
“It’s been incredible to get a second opportunity like this. Not a lot of people get that chance to come back to a program that they once left,” Shane told All Volleyball! in a wide-ranging and exclusive interview earlier this week. “I’m so thankful that I had an amazing relationship with the Loyola administration during my time away that allowed me to come back. To have that conversation and present an offer to lead the program once again. So thankful for their support and their friendship and guidance throughout my career.”
But, truth be told, Loyola was fortunate to get Davis. Not only is he beloved for decades spent nurturing a relationship with Chicago volleyball, from a coaching standpoint, Shane was equipped to hit the ground running on such short notice.
“It’s been a win-win,” he said.
“I love the volleyball community, too, all of those years at the Social Club and meeting all of those people,” Davis said “Just being a part of the Loyola scene and the Chicago scene, the grass tournaments, the beach tournaments. It’s been great being a part of all that.”
Hawks — formerly a longtime UCLA assistant — did not leave the cupboard bare in terms of talent when he resigned. From a 23-7 squad that lost in the semifinals of the MIVA Tournament, the Ramblers returned Parker Van Buren, a 6-foot-9 redshirt senior opposite who has spent time training in the USA national team’s gym. Van Buren was the MIVA Freshman of the Year, a second-team AVCA All-American as a sophomore and first-team A-A as a junior. Parker ranks No. 5 in Division I-II men’s volleyball in kills per set with 4.28 and (perhaps more impressively) No. 11 in hitting efficiency at .404.
“Parker is a five-kills-per-set kind of guy, maybe six-points-per set with the way he serves and blocks,” Davis said. “His blocking has really improved over the last few weeks. Parker does everything for us. He’s a great guy to have on your side.”
Sophomore outside hitter Daniel Fabokovic, a 6-foot-6 Czech national, was the AVCA Freshman of the Year and a second-team All-American selection. Deem Meyer, a rangy senior 6-foot-10 middle blocker, led the MIVA in blocks per set last year. In 2025, he has taken it to another level, ranking No. 1 nationally in rejections at 1.274 per set.
Junior libero JJ Sowa and sophomore OH Jake Read saw plenty of court time in 2024. Junior setter Ryan McElligott, a dynamic 6-foot-5 athlete out of suburban Mundelein, had started 10 matches.
That group, plus a new pair of 6-9 middles, junior Brad Bell and vastly improved sophomore Aidan Klein (Evanston), have gelled to produce a 17-2 record and a No. 6 ranking in the weekly AVCA coaches poll. Loyola has lost only to MIVA foes McKendree (perhaps the surprise team of the season in NCAA men’s volleyball) in five sets on the road and Lewis in four sets at home.
Having seemingly moved on to a different career, Davis hit the Ramblers gym with but a fan’s knowledge of his new charges.
“I had watched and followed like an alum. A couple of years ago, I had them over at my house before they went to play Lewis,” Shane said. “It was fun being an alum and following the team, being around as much as I could, which to be honest, wasn’t that much.
“The biggest surprise to me was how quickly the players were able to adjust to me and (new assistants Kyle Exline and Dalton Solbrig) right out of the gate. There could have been a lot of (pitfalls), even with us as a staff working together. The guys were able to make the adjustments, adapt to a new gym environment, and put that product on the court as a group.
“Talent-wise, watching them in the fall before I even took the job, it was like, ‘OK, there are some really good pieces here.’ Parker was injured at the time, which I didn’t know, and that was a surprise. But this team is talented and I’m gratified that we’ve been able to work so well together.”
The Ramblers also stand No. 4 in the men’s volleyball Ratings Percentage Index, one of the factors weighed by the selection committee. They rank behind Long Beach State (the only undefeated team in NCAA men’s volleyball), Hawaii and UC Irvine — all of which play in the Big West Conference — and are a rung higher than two-time defending NCAA champion UCLA, The NCAA Tournament will have six automatic qualifiers, the conference-tournament champions from the Big West, Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, MIVA, Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, Conference Carolinas and (for the first time this year) the six-team Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
The committee then will award two at-large bids. Conventional wisdom says those teams likely will come from the Big West or MPSF, perhaps both from the former, but Loyola might be a long-short dark horse (is that hedged enough?) for an at-large. The Ramblers hold victories over ranked West Coast programs Pepperdine (ninth in the coaches poll, No. 12 in RPI), UC San Diego (11th and 11th) and Cal State Northridge (eighth and seventh).
“We’ve done a good job of just taking care of business and controlling as much as we could control,” Davis said. “Our ranking’s great. Our RPI is great. But we don’t want to put our trust in the committee. We want to take care of that business on our own, which means winning the MIVA Tournament. If that doesn’t happen, we’re hopeful we have put ourselves in a position to (get a bid). But there’s just a ton of work that has to be done leading up to the MIVA Tournament.
“We’ve got Lindenwood back-to-back coming up Thursday and Friday, and it’s always tough to play teams on back-to-back nights, Then we have to go down to North Carolina to play Queens in another back-to-back. Then we come home to go to Lewis, and you know that’s going to be a wild environment there. And then we get to send our seniors off (at Gentile Arena) against Ball State.
“We’ve done our best to position ourselves to be in the at-large conversation. For us, it’s important for Pepperdine, UC San Diego and Northridge to keep winning. We’re rooting them on, because it only helps us.”
The short turnaround for the new coaching staff could have derailed the season if Davis had not been savvy enough to keep much of the status quo.
Van Buren described the switch from Hawks to Davis as, “different, but with not too much change. This is my third head coach in my five years here, so this was nothing new to me. Each time it’s been different. They’re not the same people. Going from Hawks to Shane (after the school year had started) was a special transition compared to switching coaches outside of season, which was what happened when Hawks came over from UCLA.
“So that was a little bit weird, but Shane was great, saying that this wasn’t the time to come in (after preseason practice had started) and switch things around, change everything, put his own spin on what we had been doing for the last two-and-a-half years. That was really good because it allowed us to settle in and get used to the new coaches right away.
“A lot of our plays, offensively and defensively, a lot of our scouts and our terminology stayed the same, which was beneficial to us.”
Shane addressed the challenges he faced during those first few weeks.
“It was not ideal timing for anybody, especially for the players, to Parker’s point, multiple head coaches in his career. But then you’re also ramping up for the season in the fall, and there’s so much work that has to be done then,” he said. “Growth that has to be done in the fall, systems that have to be ironed out, and then you go on (holiday) break. I had two-and-a-half weeks after I got hired, but that first week, I didn’t really coach in the gym at all because I wanted to get to know the guys. I had to spend time meeting with the players individually so that I could get to know them. I couldn’t coach them if I didn’t know them.
“As soon as I had the meetings and conversations, the next day in the gym was so much better for me. We had to figure it out as quickly as possible. The the benefit was that I know how Loyola works. There’s stuff still on the wall in this office that I put there 8-9 years ago,” he said with a chuckle. “There was a lot of familiarity, it was just the guys, figuring them out and understanding what they had done the last couple of years under Hawks. I wasn’t going to come in here and change everything.
“A lot of the same stuff they had been doing made sense, so it was pretty smooth. A lot of credit to (the players) for how open they were and for allowing me to make mistakes. They supported me as much as I supported them.”
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