Eagles hire Patchell

Shawn Patchell, a former head coach at BYU, who also guided the U.S. men to a gold medal at the 2012 Pan American Games, has been named men’s volleyball coach at Concordia University, the Irvine-based NAIA school announced Monday.

Patchell, who played and coached at Irvine High and later coached at Laguna Beach High, replaces Trevor Johnson, who has taken over the school’s women’s program after leading the Eagles to the NAIA men’s national title in the program’s inaugural season in 2013. He was a graduate assistant coach at UC Irvine in 1995.

“I am very happy to return to Irvine and am looking forward to providing Christian leadership and continuing the success of Concordia men’s volleyball,” Patchell said in a statement. “We will work for continued success as a team with great support from administration, staff, and the student body of Concordia.”

The last two seasons, Patchell was head men’s coach at Marymount University, an NCAA Division III school in Arlington, Va.

He was an assistant coach at BYU from 2002 to 2006, including an NCAA title run by the Cougars in 2004.

He was an assistant with the men’s national team in 2011 and 2010 and guided the boys’ junior national team in 2009 and the boys’ youth national team in 2008.

Patchell was a member of BYU’s first NCAA men’s volleyball team and a four-year starter for the Cougars.

He went on to play professionally in Spain on the indoor and sand volleyball circuits before returning to the states and beginning his coaching career in 1993. He has coached club volleyball since 2009.

Patchell earned his bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in business management from BYU in 1993. He went on to earn his master’s in English literature from UCI in 2000.

— From staff reports