Aug. 25, 2005

LAS VEGAS - UNLV volleyball head coach Allison Keeley announced the hiring of Marlon Sano to round out her coaching staff today. Sano comes to UNLV with over 20 years of coaching experience, the last 10 at his alma mater, Cal Poly.

In a decade at Cal Poly, Sano helped with the resurgence of the Mustang volleyball program with berths into the NCAA Tournament three of the past six years. Sano held the title of associate head coach through his last four years at Cal Poly.

"We are pleased to have Marlon (Sano) join our coaching staff," noted Keeley. "Marlon brings over two decades of coaching experience and knowledge with him to the court every day. We feel fortunate to have him with us this season."

Prior to coaching at his alma mater, Sano was the head coach at Utah State. He arrived in Logan, Utah, in the winder of 1991 and coached through the 1993 season. Before his stint at USU, he was an assistant coach at Cal State Fullerton from 1989-91 and the head coach at Southern California College from 1988-89.

From 1982-84, he served as an assistant coach for the 1984 for the silver medal-winning U.S. Olympic Women's Volleyball Team. That squad also won the bronze medal at the 1982 World Championships and a pair of gold medals at the 1983 Pan Am Games and the NORCECA Zonals Championships.

Sano has experience coaching on the club level as well, directing highly successful teams in both Southern California and Utah. Among his best teams were seven squads that earned a Top-10 national ranking. Eighty-four players who played under Sano at the club level went on to receive collegiate scholarships. Nine of those players were selected as High School All-Americans, and 14 have appeared in Volleyball Magazine as a "Fab 50" selection.

A 1979 graduate of Cal Poly, Sano and his wife, Misty, have two children, Markus, and Madison.