Winthrop Volleyball
Head Coach ~ Bruce Atkinson
Bruce Atkinson, who has a reputation for
building championship programs on both the
NCAA Div. I and Div. II levels, was named
head volleyball coach at Winthrop in February
2013.
Atkinson joins the Eagles from Towson
University just outside Baltimore where he
served as head coach for the past three years.
He directed the Tigers to the 2012 Colonial
Athletic Association regular season champion-
ship with a 12-0 conference record and a 25-4
overall slate. His 2011 team compiled a 23-9
record and he was voted the 2011 and 2012
CAA Coach of the Year. In his
first season at Towson, he took over a program that had gone
8-21 the previous year and finished the 2010 season with a
16-15 record which included a 10-0 mark to start the season,
the best start in program history.
Prior to arriving at Towson, Atkinson served as head
coach for three years at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, a
Div. II school, where he led the Vulcans to a 23-5 record in
his first season and was selected the 2007 PacWest Coach
of the Year. Hawaii-Hilo posted a 21-7 record in its second
season under Atkinson and finished second in the league. In
2009, Atkinson and the Vulcans carried a top 20 ranking for
most of the season and finished with a 25-2 record as the
team made its first postseason appearance in over a decade
and Atkinson earned PacWest Coach of the Year honors for
the second time.
Before taking over at Hawaii-Hilo, Atkinson served as the
head coach at the University of Texas Brownsville for a year.
He got his first head coaching job in 2004 at Dana College
where he was also an assistant professor of physical educa-
tion. He began is coaching career in 1999 as an assistant
women's volleyball coach and health and physical education
instructor at Merced College where he served for five seasons
The 45-year-old California native holds a degree in Exercise Science
from Brigham Young University-Hawaii in 1993. He also received a Doctor
of Chiropractic degree from Southern California University of Health Sci-
ences in 1996. He is married to the former Junae Kekauoha
