Taryn Wright Campbell
Episode 308
23 DEC 2024
She is the Head Varsity Volleyball Coach at St. Francis Catholic High School in Sacramento, California, where she was previously the head junior varsity and assistant varsity volleyball coach. As a student-athlete there she had led the team to the state championship as a junior in 2005 before later going on to earn three All-Big Sky Conference awards at the University of Montana. Her coaching career began as a student assistant at Montana and included a stop at Nevada as a volunteer assistant and director of volleyball operations. She also coached club ball for Northern Nevada Juniors.
Notable guest quotes:
“I did go to Catholic school from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade. The school I went to, my mom was actually a teacher at, and we would go to Sunday Masses as a family when we were younger. My dad was actually baptized when I was in college.”
“I eventually started working at a Catholic school with my mom and have been there ever since, and I love being able to teach kids about the faith, talk to them about it, be able to pray with them daily.”
“It’s very important for me to raise my kids the same way as my parents did.”
“I did play other sports growing up. I did play soccer up until my sophomore year in high school… and tournaments ended up being on the same weekends. And so, I obviously couldn’t be in two places at once… and, my dad, in the end, he basically told me, ‘Look, you need to figure out which one you love to practice more because you’re going to do that way more than you’re going to compete.’ … That hands down turned to volleyball for me.”
“I always had my own personal prayer that I would do before every match.”
“We did a lot of projects out with the community. We did a Habitat for Humanity project one time as a team, which was very impactful to see what we could do on a day off of practice to help those less fortunate than us. We would go into different classrooms and read stories to the kids, and just seeing the impact that we as athletes could have to these kids that we don’t even know was huge.”
“I feel like as a coach, kind of reminding these girls that there’s more than just the sport out there in life and part of my job as a coach is not only to teach them those skills, but to teach them how to be good young women. Because if I’m not teaching them those life lessons, those skills, encouraging them to go do these service hour things, I’m not doing my job because I should be teaching them more than just volleyball.”
“One of the beauties of being able to teach at a Catholic school is I get to talk about Christ every single day. I get to talk about Him in science, not just in religion.”
“The last couple years we as a school incorporated the virtues into our daily practice. We would have quotes on a different virtue and so we kind of relate back to that pretty consistently.”
Related link:
Taryn’s volleyball bio on St. Francis High School website
