Had Jane Cwayna thought she would have been volleyball coach at Antelope Valley College, she probably wouldn’t have had a .560 winning percentage, two conference championships and three coach of the year awards, nor have 200 career wins.
You see, Cwayna applied for the job as women’s basketball coach (a position she also held at AVC until 1990), and claims if the ad had listed volleyball as well, she wouldn’t have applied.
She took the job anyway, and has, over the past 24 seasons, consistently put her teams in the win column and toward the top of the conference standings, compiling a 228-178 match record.
The Marauders were 61-14 over the 1990 through 1993 seasons, the first time AVC has had four straight double digit win seasons. In that 1993 season, the Marauders were perfect through conference, and won their first-ever home playoff contest, with Cwayna being named Foothill Conference Coach of the Year.
In addition to 1993, her 1982 and 1983 teams were conference champions, and she was named Coach of the Year in 1982 and again this season. Cwayna has had only four losing seasons, and has sent 18 players to four-year programs, including such notables as Kim Fairchild, who started for the 1989 NCAA Division II volleyball champions Cal State Bakersfield, Heidi Roarty, who played on scholarship at the University of South Florida, and Lorna Sawyer, who played for Weber State.
From 1981 to 1990, she led the Marauder women’s basketball team. She ended her tenure as coach with the school’s first-ever conference championship and as Foothill Conference Coach of the Year.
Cwayna began her athletic career swimming the breaststroke and freestyle in her hometown of Grand Rapids, MI. After high school, she attended Grand Rapids Junior College, where she was a setter in volleyball and guard in basketball.
She moved on to Western Michigan University, where she received her bachelor’s and master’s in physical education, in addition to playing basketball, volleyball and swimming for the Broncos.
She began her coaching career at West Middle School in Grand Rapids, where she coached volleyball, basketball and track and was in charge of intramurals. She then transferred to Union High School and started the girls’ basketball and volleyball programs. She spent nine years at the school, and in her last two seasons, her teams went 40-9 and moved on to the quarterfinals.
Cwayna coached basketball at Central Michigan University for one year before taking the Marauder position in 1981.
On the personal side, if Cwayna had known about the volleyball assignment, and thus not taken the AVC job, she also probably wouldn’t have met her husband, Joe Kern. Joe is the father of Marauder assistant coach Karen Valenica. Jane and Joe were married in 1998 in her hometown of Grand Rapids, MI.