Coach Watch: They Wrote Her Off. She Came Back.
Fired. Silent. Forgotten. Fourteen months after Wake Forest showed her the door, Randi Smart just walked through a new one — in the Big Ten.
Every coaching career has a moment where the phone stops ringing. For Randi Smart, that moment came on December 15, 2024, in the form of a newsletter from Wake Forest Athletics Director John Currie. No press conference. No dramatic announcement. Just a quiet note to alumni and fans that Smart would “not continue” as head coach of the Demon Deacons. Six seasons. Done.
The record was what it was: 77-88 overall, 32-73 in ACC play. The 2024 season — her last — went 13-18, the program’s worst showing in four years. When the numbers stop working and the trajectory points down, athletic directors act. Currie acted. Smart was out.
But here’s what the raw record doesn’t tell you: Smart didn’t inherit a program on the rise. She inherited wreckage. In 2019, her predecessor, Bill Ferguson, was caught up in the national college admissions scandal and placed on administrative leave. Smart was handed the interim tag, steadied a roster in chaos, and eventually earned the permanent title. She then took a program that hadn’t seen postseason volleyball in 36 years and got them to the 2022 NIVC. The highest RPI in Wake Forest volleyball history — No. 21 — happened on her watch, in 2023. The story was never as simple as the final record made it look.
She stabilized a program in the middle of a federal scandal, got them to their first postseason in four decades, then got fired for it two years later.
What followed the firing was something unusual in volleyball coaching circles: nothing. No announcement of “exploring opportunities.” No conference circuit cameos. No whisper-network chatter about which program was in talks. Randi Smart — 20-plus years in the game, résumé that includes 11 NCAA Tournament appearances and 17 AVCA All-Americans — went completely quiet.
The carousel kept spinning without her. Programs hired, fired, reshuffled. Conference realignment continued to scramble the landscape. Smart was simply not in the conversation. Fourteen months passed. That’s a long time to be invisible in a sport that moves this fast.
For context on what she was sitting on: Smart’s career résumé includes 52 all-conference selections, 29 AVCA All-Region honorees, four conference players of the year, and three Newcomers of the Year. Coaches with that kind of track record don’t usually go 14 months without a job. The silence was loud.
Was she taking time? Waiting for the right fit? Navigating a market that treats fired Power Five head coaches with complicated energy — respect for what they’ve done, skepticism about why they’re available? We don’t have the inside answer. What we have is the result: on February 10, 2026, the silence broke.
Rutgers head coach Caitlin Schweihofer made it official. Randi Smart was joining the Scarlet Knights staff as an assistant coach. Not a head coaching seat — an assistant role. The Big Ten is one of the deepest volleyball conferences in the country.
Reaction from the volleyball world ranged from surprise to respect. A step down in title, sure. But read it differently and it looks like a calculated move: Smart gets back on a D-I sideline without a head coach’s burden, gets to work alongside a young HC who can use the experience, and lands in a conference where visibility is high, and competition is real. If the goal is rebuilding a brand — quietly, from the inside — this is actually the right call.
The Big Ten is where volleyball careers get made and unmade. Smart chose to re-enter through the front door, not the back.— VolleyTea Editorial
Rutgers isn’t a finished product. It’s a program with ambition and room to grow — exactly the kind of place where a veteran assistant can leave fingerprints on something real. Smart brings two decades of development knowledge into a room that’s actively building. The fit makes sense on both sides.
The coaching carousel rarely offers clean second acts. More often, it offers lateral moves dressed up as opportunities, advisory titles that mean nothing, and quiet exits from the sport altogether. What Smart landed is something different: a legitimate back door into a legitimate program, with a path forward if she wants it.
Assistant coach is not the final chapter. Keep her name in your file. The next time a mid-major or rebuilding Power program needs a head coach who knows how to pull a program from the basement, Smart’s phone is going to ring.
They wrote her off after 2024. She spent 14 months in the quiet. And then she walked back onto a Division I sideline in the Big Ten like the story was never over. Because it wasn’t.
Welcome back, Coach.