Throughout his over 25-year-long career at Concord Academy, Girls Varsity Volleyball Coach Darren Emery has left a lasting legacy on the program and school. He began coaching at CA in 1999 and has since grown the program from just eight players to one of the largest in the school, consisting of varsity, junior varsity, and intramural programs.
Emery fell in love with the sport at a young age and brings that same passion to coaching each day. He says that his interest in volleyball began with his family. He recounts, “My dad started playing volleyball when I was very young, and he introduced the game to my older brother, who was a fantastic volleyball player. And being a younger brother, I wanted to do anything my older brother did. So I gravitated to the game at a very young age.” Due to the lack of boys clubs, Emery was unable to play volleyball seriously in high school, so he was drawn to basketball and football instead. He then carried lessons from these sports into his volleyball game. He says, “I was always the person that needed to touch the ball the most. So I was a point guard in basketball, I was a quarterback in football. Like, I needed to have the ball myself. And then I brought those skills to setting at volleyball.”
As an adult, Emery played in a league called the Yankee League, which is the adult counterpart to youth club athletics. Within twenty years, he played on more than fifteen of these teams. On one team, he played with a woman from CA’s history department who told him and his brother that CA was looking for a new girls volleyball coach and encouraged them to apply.
Emery had never considered coaching before, but was intrigued, so he and his brother interviewed and were hired as the school’s assistant coach and head coach, respectively. The first two years, he and his brother coached together before he took over in 2002 as head coach.
CA’s community immediately stood out to Emery, and as the years passed, he fell more in love with the school. He explains, “I love this community. I love the kids that we get here at CA… I want to coach kids that, you know, never knew they would be an athlete until they started playing something and found out, ‘Hey, this is great,’ Like that's what I want to be a part of. I love that.”
His coaching philosophy is not just about wins and losses, but about the individual players and their journeys. He says, “I tell every team that I've ever coached that I don't hate losing, but I do love winning. And I feel like that's an important distinction, because if you love winning, you'll play anybody, anywhere at anything, because you might win. If you hate losing, you might be afraid of feeling that losing feeling, so you don't want to play.” He also emphasizes a love for the game and decision-making, values that are reflected in practices through his incorporation of scrimmages and intentional games.
The program has had a strong impact on the athletes who are a part of it. Char Cavanaugh ’26, who has been playing in the program for four years, articulates this idea: “Darren is a great coach, he pushes you to do your best on the court and is always there to listen when you’re not doing your best off the court. Coming to CA, I didn’t think I was going to play a fall sport, but I tried out for volleyball on a whim. Over the last four years, I fell in love with the sport and work hard to be the best player I can be because of Darren. He has high expectations of all of his players because he sees the potential in all of us. That has encouraged me to do my best and become the best player I can be.”
This year, he hopes the team will compete in the Eastern Independent League (EIL) tournament and aims to be in a competitive position for a New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) tournament bid.