Vickie Nichols named Spartan volleyball coach

The timing was right for Vickie Nichols.

Along a winding road that has seen Nichols start a junior college program, coach a Division I program, become an assistant coach at the middle and high school levels, and move out of the country and back, Nichols has reached her next destination: Mountain Brook.

Nichols has been named the head volleyball coach at Mountain Brook High School, taking over a program that has won three consecutive Class 7A state championships. She replaces Haven O’Quinn, who — after her successful run with the Spartans — was hired as the head coach at Birmingham-Southern College.

“I was really excited when the opportunity came up to even interview,” Nichols said of the job. “That was just a really big deal. I was really thrilled when they offered me the job.”

Nichols has been on all sides of the coin. She has started programs from scratch, and she has inherited messy situations in her coaching career. With the Spartans, the culture of success has already been firmly entrenched.

“It’s exciting to walk into it where the girls already have the mindset of winning. I’m not here to change anything. I’m just here to build on the tradition that they’ve already started. That’s exciting to me,” she said.

Nichols has nine children, five of whom are adopted, all between the ages of 18 and 27, and all of which have been a big driving factor throughout the course of her coaching career.

After starring at Bradshaw High School in Florence and Mississippi State University, she returned to Florence, got married, and helped start the volleyball program at Northwest Shoals Community College. She was hired to run the Samford program after six years at Northwest Shoals, and spent three years coaching the Bulldogs before stepping away.

Nichols said, “I got to a point where I knew, it was either I was going to see them [my kids] play or I’m going to say, ‘Honey, I heard you were really good.’”

The chance to be a coach at Oak Mountain Middle School seems like a step down from Samford, but for Nichols, the opportunity to coach some of her kids was a great one. She was also able to be an assistant at Hoover High School, after a move of the family. But now that all of her kids have graduated high school, she’s ready to be atop a program once more.

“I’ve been a head coach longer than I’ve been an assistant over my career, and I just knew it was time for me to be a head coach again,” she said.

Nichols took the 2016-17 school year off after moving her family back from Ecuador, where she taught and coached volleyball at an international school in Quito for a year. Whether it’s at home or abroad, Nichols is passionate about sharing her affection for the game with others.

“I’ve always wanted to bring kids to a point where they just love the sport,” Nichols said. “I love the sport. I do it because I love it. I want them to have the same passion.”

Her team at Mountain Brook should be equipped with the ability to contend. The Spartans are the only team to bring home a blue map from Class 7A, winning the title in each of the three years the state’s highest classification has existed.

Nichols said the construction of the team will largely determine the team’s style of play, but that is one of her favorite challenges.

“I love the strategy of the game, and I love to break down game film and figure out how I’m going to beat you and what it’s going to take to win,” she said.

Granted things work out at Mountain Brook, Nichols sees it as a potential perfect landing spot to cap off a coaching career mixed with a little bit of everything.

“I want to finish well, and I can see myself being here until I do finish. As long as I love it, I’m going to keep doing it, because it keeps me young,” she said.