Florida volleyball head coach Mary Wise is retiring after 34 seasons, she announced in a team meeting Thursday evening.
Wise guided the Gators to 25 SEC Championships, eight NCAA semifinals and two NCAA Championship runner-up finishes. Wise’s over three decades with Florida leaves her as the longest-tenured coach in UF athletics history.
The 65-year-old coach discussed her decision to leave UF’s program, citing how she didn’t feel she had everything it took to do her job at the end of last season.
“That's when I thought, 'Do I have it in me?' And I didn't think it was fair to the program if I didn't. And more importantly, it wasn't fair to the players,” Wise said in a press release. “The players I kept seeing through this whole thing and why it was such a hard decision."
The Gators finished the 2024 season 23-8, losing to No. 2 Stanford in the NCAA Tournament Regional Semifinals 3-1 on Dec. 12.
Wise won 1,068 games in her career, the fourth-most of any coach and the most for a female coach in NCAA history. In her time with UF, Wise’s teams never finished a season with fewer than 19 wins. When she arrived in 1991 after coaching at Iowa State from 1981-1984, Florida was coming off of a 15-16 record.
UF made the NCAA Tournament in every season with Wise at the helm — the third-longest streak in Division I history — which UF athletic director Scott Stricklin credited to her work ethic.
"Gator athletes, staff and fans are forever grateful to Mary for her tireless efforts,” he said. “And for making Florida Volleyball one of the premier programs in the nation."
Wise will now move onto the next step of her life, but she expressed her gratitude for her time in Gainesville.
"So many people made it special. The players and the coaches, the support staff,” Wise said. “And the fans. Watching women's sports [when I got here] was not where it is today. That was not the case in the early '90s, except in Gainesville."
UF has not announced who will lead the volleyball program next.
Contact Noah White at nwhite@alligator.org. Follow him on X at @noahwhite1782
Noah is a Spring 2025 Assistant Sports Editor and Copy Desk Chief. He's a second-year journalism major who enjoys reading and shamefully rooting for Tennessee sports teams. He is also a Liberty League Women's Soccer expert.
