New TCU volleyball coach knows what it means to be a Horned Frog
When Jill Kramer, then Jill Pape, walked around the campus of TCU when she was a student-athlete things looked very different.
There was a circle drive around Frog Fountain. Current TCU football coach Gary Patterson was an assistant under Dennis Franchione and running back LaDainian Tomlinson sparked the process of putting TCU on the map.
The TCU volleyball team, which Kramer was a part of, was in its infancy.
Fifteen years later as Kramer walks on the campus she calls home, she can’t believe the steps the university has made to become a national name.
“It’s so much more awe-inspiring when you step on it now,” she said.
Kramer can call Fort Worth home once more after being named the third head coach of the TCU volleyball program Monday, assuming the role of director of volleyball, which also oversees the sand volleyball program, which is also in its infancy.
“I can’t describe it,” Kramer said. “A lot of coaches get into coaching, for volleyball anyway, because of what you experienced in college. That’s why I coach, no doubt about it. To be able to give back to a place that I loved so dearly and has been so good to me is — you can’t put a word on that. It’s the best feeling ever.”
To fill the vacancy at her alma mater, Kramer left her post as head coach at West Virginia, where she had served from 2010-14 as the program’s third head coach.
“She took a program that was absolutely dilapidated and turned them into a competitive program to where you could see the progress out on the floor,” TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte said. “We knew exactly what we were going to get in a technical coach.”
In her first season at the helm of the Mountaineer program, she led the program to a 4-0 start, its best since 1987. West Virginia collected its first Big 12 Conference win and its first 20-win season in 20 years in 2013.
Kramer’s five seasons in Morgantown built to last season when the Mountaineers finished with a program-high RPI of 70 and had its first two All-American selections in program history.
It’s easy to see program building is a key part of Kramer’s resume.
She entered TCU in 1996 as the first volleyball student-athlete on scholarship in TCU history and began the process of taking a school that was unheard of in volleyball circles to the competitive program it is today.
“When I was being recruited by TCU, I had never even heard of TCU because I was a volleyball player and they didn’t have a volleyball program at the time,” she said. “I didn’t know of a school that didn’t have a volleyball program. Now, I think it’s probably talked about very greatly. Now with this success in the other programs as well, that can only help.”
Kramer still owns the TCU career records for kills and total attacks.
While things may have changed aesthetically around TCU’s campus, Kramer knows exactly what it is like to be a Horned Frog student-athlete and that adds to the main focus of her coaching philosophy — being a player’s coach.
“Everything is about the players for me. We’re going to get to where we need to go, but they are going to know that there is mutual respect there and that there is trust there,” she said.
First priority is putting together a spring program that not only kickstarts the sand volleyball program in its first season, but also gets plenty of work indoors as TCU prepares for its first season under a new head coach.
Kramer said West Virginia was a perfect fit for a young coach like herself, but it’s better returning to where she learned her love for the game of volleyball and developed life long friendships with her teammates and the Fort Worth community.
That’s exactly why Del Conte brought her back to TCU.
This story was originally published December 30, 2014 at 10:19 PM with the headline "New TCU volleyball coach knows what it means to be a Horned Frog."