Mile Mondays weren’t very popular … until they led to Winning Weekdays and Winning Weekends.

When Julie Green took over last March as coach of Coppell (Texas), one of the rules she implemented was that her players had to run a mile as fast as they could. The next week’s mile had to be even faster — or they would have to do extra running. This was in addition to weight-room work.

“We cried some, and we threw up some,” said Green the 2011 ESPNHS Volleyball Coach of the Year. “But we began to see the effects when we battled and outlasted teams and played matches to five sets and were still in good shape at the end.”

Case in point was the regional quarterfinals against defending state champion Hebron (Carrollton, Texas), which had eliminated Coppell in the first round of the 2010 playoffs. This year’s match went five sets, with the well-conditioned Coppell athletes prevailing.

It happened again in the state semifinals, when Johnson (San Antonio) won two out of the first three sets before Coppell rallied.

And when Coppell defeated Boyd (McKinney, Texas) in a four-set final, the Cowgirls had their first-ever state title.

“I’m not sure if we could have won without (Green),” said 6-foot-4 senior middle blocker Kierra Holst, the MVP of the Class 5A state finals and an Oklahoma recruit. “We needed a coach like her.

“At the beginning of the season, we were a bunch of good individuals. She worked on us becoming a great team.”

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