The Oak Hall School volleyball team has had a lot of success under head coach Perry McDonald in a short period of time.
The Eagles have been to two FHSAA final fours and won three district titles in McDonald’s five seasons.
However, this will be the final year on the sidelines for McDonald, who has announced his retirement from coaching after 28 years.
“Candidly, I’ve been ready to hang this up for about four years,” McDonald said. “It’s taken some arm twisting going back to three or four years ago to keep me around. There’s a lot that I’ve wanted to do in life for the past five years and in the past 20 years. I haven’t made a single college reunion or high school reunion in Virginia, where I’m from, because every fall has been an immersion of volleyball. And I’m one of those personalities that if I get involved with something like that you’re going to get 110%. My mind wakes up at 2 or 3 O’clock in the morning to try to figure out ways to build a better mouse trap.”
His team has actually known since the preseason (August) that this would be his last season.
“I debated for a long time what the appropriate way was to break that news and when we were down at Tampa camp in the middle of our three-day weekend there at the University of Tampa, one of the seniors made the comment, ‘Hey this is our last Tampa camp, let’s make sure we go out with a bang and make it special’ and I felt like that was an appropriate segway,” McDonald said.
McDonald told Athletics Director Edwin McTureous at that time too and they’ve managed to keep it low-key.
OHS is 14-2 this year following a 3-1 win against Williston on Senior Night on Tuesday night in the regular season finale. The Eagles will host next week’s 2A-District 1 tournament as the No. 1 seed with a chance at another district championship and postseason berth.
“It’s a little bittersweet,” said senior defensive specialist Sarah Miller, who has played on varsity since her freshman year. “He’s done this for so long and I know that he’s looking forward to probably not having to stress about the games and everything, and I know he enjoys watching his daughter (Cassidy), but it’s good and bad because it’s so sad to know that it’s coming to an end, but I think it’s best for everyone.”
Last year Oak Hall (25-5) rallied past Christ’s Church Academy (Jacksonville) in the Class 2A-Region 1 Final to advance to Winter Haven, before bowing out in the Class 2A state semifinals.
“He’s a great coach,” Miller said. “You can tell he just cares so much about the girls. He cares so much about the team. He loves the sport so much. He puts so much thought into everything he does…he pushes us to be the best no matter what.”
So, this is it for McDonald after 28 years.
“A whole lot of great memories and wonderful kids and amazing families, starting off with Eastside for seven years back in 1996, and then eight years at P.K. Yonge, taking a hiatus for a few years to be dad, then dabbling with middle school and club as both my kids got into volleyball, and then getting roped into Oak Hall for five years,” he said. “It’s been a wonderful experience.”
He credited McTureous and the OHS athletic department staff, noting that it’s been “the best department that I’ve worked with in all the years that I’ve been in Alachua County.”
A lot has changed since he began coaching.
“The neat thing about coaching is very similar to the way technology has progressed over the past 28 years,” McDonald said. “When we started back in the 90s and the early 2000s, the resources online were not quite as plentiful. I felt like this iteration of my coaching career took on a completely different level.
“I found that I was jumping into video series and subscriptions to the art of coaching volleyball and just putting together a repertoire of teaching techniques that would help me with kids that were my middle school team kids or younger all the way up through my varsity kids that could be college bound. Just a lot of fun learning on my side. It’s what kept it fresh for me is learning and trying to come through and incorporate what I’ve learned over the past five years, and I think my teams have been the beneficiary of that.”
His daughter, Cassidy, is a senior on this year’s team and one of several coach/daughter combinations in Alachua County. She believes Oak Hall will be in good hands moving forward.
“I think it’s definitely going to be difficult for all the girls because we’ve had him coaching for so long, but I think there’s enough talent on this team and a lot of talented underclassmen that are staying that they’ll be able to work with the new coach regardless of who it is and be successful,” she said.
Her dad has been blessed to coach in the city of Gainesville.
“I’ve had a lot of tools to work with, a lot of insanely good players, 3-5 Florida Gators, kids that were immensely talented and phenomenal families that supported those kids,” he said. “When I was coming out of UF as a graduate student, I felt like the campus life was what was amazing and that made me want to stay in town.”
His time coaching his daughter has made it a family affair, but he got that sense of family long before she was born.
“When I began teaching at Eastside, I felt like I had won the lottery in life because I had no idea of what an amazing family town Gainesville is and the resources that are there for children to come through and get involved in everything from academics to athletics,” he said. “It makes this an extraordinarily special community to be a part of and I’d like to think that I’ve found a way to put my fingerprints on hopefully making a few lives better along the way.”