Florida Gators

Mary Wise UF Bio | Three From Archives: Better Than Ever | Long Wait Over | A Wise Woman

Editor's note: Check out FloridaGators.com on Friday for more coverage of Mary Wise's retirement.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — She was eight months into the job, and life was moving fast for Mary Wise. The wins and memories were accumulating at an astonishing pace, quicker than anyone anticipated for a program coming off a losing record.

In the regular-season home finale of 1991, Wise's first season as Florida's volleyball coach, the Gators hosted Florida State at the O'Connell Center. Wise and her Gators had exceeded outside expectations, ranked fifth in the nation, and were chasing their 30th win when the Seminoles came to town. A then-school-record crowd of 4,196 fans showed up for the match.

The long-ago sweep of the Gators' in-state rival still resonates with 65-year-old Wise, who had never witnessed fans perform "the wave" at a volleyball game until that Tuesday night in November 1991.

"This is going to be special here,'' she recalled this week. "And it has been. It really has." Wise was just getting started back then, and 34 seasons later, she is prepared to call it a career. She announced her retirement late Thursday afternoon, capping a record-breaking run as the longest-tenured coach in UF Athletics history. During a team meeting, Wise delivered the news to the Gators.

Wise's decision was not rushed.

She said that after the winter break and with the spring recruiting cycle approaching, she reflected on her perspective regarding the work ahead and concluded it was a suitable time to retire.

"It was something I refused to think about for a while," she said. "I wouldn't let myself go there. I wanted to be all-in, and I allowed myself to do that. Normally, over the semester break, I get to recharge the battery, and I found out old batteries don't recharge easily.

"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, the players I kept seeing through this whole thing and why it was such a hard decision."

Wise exits as a titan of NCAA volleyball, one of the sport's greatest ambassadors and winningest coaches. If you need to verify her status, check out these numbers: Wise has 1,068 career wins, fourth-most in NCAA Division I history and the all-time winningest female coach in Division I. Wise earned 987 of those victories at UF after being named Florida's head coach on March 25, 1991, after five seasons as an assistant at Kentucky. Wise made headlines — and an instant impact — from the start of her coaching career. When she was hired as a 21-year-old head coach at Iowa State in 1981, fresh off her playing career at Purdue, she became the youngest Division I coach in history. She led the Cyclones to three winning seasons in four years.

Wise never slowed down in her role as a trailblazer. Wise led the Gators to eight Final Fours, two national runner-up finishes and a record 25 Southeastern Conference championships. Wise's teams were consistently excellent, making the NCAA Tournament in each of her 34 seasons, the third-longest streak in Division I history.

"So many people made it special,'' she said. "The players and the coaches, the support staff. Some of the best recruiting we've ever done was sitting on the bench. 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."
 

Wise led the Gators to the Sweet 16 this past season after NCAA Tournament wins over N.C. State and Kansas away from home. Florida's season ended with a loss to Stanford in Louisville, Ky., with a berth in the Elite Eight on the line.

The word icon is often overused in modern culture, but in Wise's world, she is undoubtedly among the most respected and revered coaches the sport has ever known. She took over a Gators program that was coming off a 15-16 season and still in its first decade of existence.

Under Wise's direction, the Gators became one of the sport's elite programs and one of the UF campus's most popular draws, reeling off a then-NCAA-record 58-match home winning streak over her first three seasons.

"Mary Wise is an icon at the University of Florida, in college athletics and in the volleyball community. Beginning with her being the youngest Division I coach ever hired at her first coaching stop, Mary's 43-year journey in the profession is an impressive parade of remarkable successes and accomplishments,'' Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin said. "As impressive as those accomplishments are, it is equally impressive the countless lives she touched and impacted along the way.

"Gator athletes, staff and fans are forever grateful to Mary for her tireless efforts, and for making Florida Volleyball one of the premier programs in the nation."

Wise became a local community pillar during her career, raising two sons along with her husband, Mark Wise, a longtime college basketball TV/radio analyst. She plans to be a regular at her grandchildren's sports events during retirement, something she missed out on with her sons during her coaching career.

But before she turns pages on the next chapter of her life, she is sure to receive countless thanks from former players, coaches, fans and friends.

Wise wants them to know that she says thank you, too, for making it a journey of a lifetime that eventually had to end.

"There was never going to be a good time, but you can't stop Father Time,'' Wise said. "My wish all along was to set Florida up for the future, and I feel so good about the players returning, the players coming in.

"Volleyball has never been in as good a place as it is nationally. The landscape of college athletics looks very different than from when we got in, and I like to think it's the right time to pass the torch."