Medaille College Director of Athletics Susan Roarke announced the hiring of John Forman as the men's and women's volleyball coach on Friday.
Forman joins Medaille after most recently having been the Volleyball Director at Nation Academy in Charleston, SC where he provided coaching and leadership to youth volleyball organizations. "I'm excited to take on a new challenge and am looking forward to a different landscape," said Forman. Upon ending up in Buffalo to coach the Mavericks, coaching has taken Forman halfway around the world while also putting together a solid resume of schools in the states.
Forman got his coaching career started in 1998 where he was named the Assistant Volleyball Coach at Dean College in Franklin, MA. He would then jump over to the University of Rhode Island where he was an assistant for a year spanning from 2000-2001. He would then add Brown University to his resume, spending his time from 2001-2006 as an assistant at the Ivy League institution. There, he would recruit six All-Ivy players and coach 11 players for 14 total selections to the All-Ivy team.
Forman would take a brief break from the coaching world until 2012 when he made the jump oversees to take control as the Head Volleyball Coach for both the men's and women's teams at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Forman would coach both teams to a combined 82-48 record with both qualifying for the championship tournament all three seasons with Forman at the helm. The women's side were semifinalists in 2013-14 and the men cracked the top-eight each year.
Forman would make his next European stop in Sweden as the Head Coach for Svedala Volleybollklubb, a team in the Eliteserie, the top league in Sweden. Svedala would finish the regular season in third place and would make it all the way to the semifinals where they would lose a tightly contested matchup. With the team having former ACC and PAC-12 players, three of the players Forman signed were named to the league's Team of the Year.
Coaching in areas where your first language isn't the first language of others can be a challenge, but it has made Forman a better coach, he says. "It was a great opportunity to gain experience in different cultures but the language barrier makes you become more aware to comprehension," he said. "It has also taught me the importance of communication and the need to adapt to different settings."
The last stop on his coaching path prior to Medaille would be at Midwestern State University in Texas. Forman began his tenure as an assistant but was named Acting Head Coach in Spring 2018. Upon arrival, Forman helped improve the program drastically. In 2017, the team finished with a 15-16 record with seven conference wins compared to their 6-26 record in 2015 without a conference win.
On top of coaching, Forman is also an author, developer, conference presenter and an educator. He writes for coachingvb.com, a volleyball blog that has received over 100 thousand views a year. He has also taken part in interviews for Volleyball Coaching Wizards, which has also published three books. Lastly, he taught two classes at Midwestern State; a volleyball activity class and a personal fitness class.
Forman attended the University of Rhode Island for his undergrad where he received his Bachelors in Business Administration. He then received his Masters from University of Maryland, College Park in Business Administration. Finally, he earned a PhD in Behavioral Finance from the University of Exeter.
He chose Medaille due to the opportunity to coach both men's and women's volleyball and he enjoyed the overall feel of the Medaille community and the direction that the college and athletics is headed towards.