Janae McDonnell - Assistant Volleyball Coach - Women's Volleyball Coaches - University of Northern Colorado Athletics

Janae McDonnell

Title:
Assistant Volleyball Coach
Email:
Janae.McDonnell@unco.edu
Phone:
719.352.8795

Janae McDonnell was announced as assistant volleyball coach in June of 2022.

In 2022, she helped the Bears win the Big Sky regular season and Tournament championships, earning a bid to the NCAA tournament for the seventh time.

McDonnell brings years of both coaching and playing experience to UNC. In 2019, she worked as an assistant coach for Montana where she mostly worked with outside hitters and defensive specialists and ran all their summer camps. Prior to UNC she served as an assistant coach for one season at Colorado State.

She will return to the Big Sky with a wealth of experience as a player in the conference to share with UNC players as well. Thanks to her four stellar years at Northern Arizona, McDonnell is first in program history in kills, kills per set, attacks and sets played.

Throughout her college career, she was a five-time Big Sky Player of the Week, Big Sky Regular Season MVP and Big Sky Tournament MVP her senior season. McDonnell also earned All-Big Sky first-team recognition three times. She currently ranks 7^th all-time in Big Sky Conference history for kills. After college, she played professional volleyball for two seasons in Sweden and France.

No stranger to the Centennial State, the Colorado Springs native played all four years at Cheyenne Mountain High School, where she also holds the school kills record and was named the Denver Post 4A Player of the Year. During her high school career, she led her team to two consecutive state titles.

McDonnell earned her bachelor's degree in Elementary Education from NAU and was a fifth-grade teacher in Fort Collins before coaching. She and her husband, Zach, welcomed their first daughter, Elliot, in 2022, and their second daughter, Emerson, in 2024.
McDonnell Family