For Slippery Rock’s 13th head volleyball coach, Dylan Lasher, the sport is not just a career, volleyball runs in his family. From his mom to his uncle and sisters, volleyball was always a conversation at the dinner table. When Lasher started playing, his mom was his assistant coach and then his younger sister’s head coach. Volleyball was in their blood.
It goes deeper for him than just the love of the game. Volleyball is a way for Lasher to stay close to his father, whom he lost at a young age.
“We were all really getting into the sport, and that kind of became our whole thing to hold on to,” he said.
Lasher was a five-sport athlete in high school. He even played soccer as well as volleyball in college.
“Volleyball just won out,” he said.
In 2012, Lasher made his college debut playing men’s volleyball at Thiel College. He played in 385 sets across 115 matches during his career. Now, over ten years later, he still ranks second in Thiel program history for career matches played and sets played, third in digs, fourth in aces, sixth in kills, and tenth in attack percentages.
He graduated from Thiel in 2015 and started his first coaching position with Chatham University as the women’s volleyball assistant coach. The following year, he became the head coach and held that position for two years. After that, he accepted a job at Millikin University as their men’s head coach before returning to his alma mater in 2020 as the men’s head coach and then the women’s head coach in ’23.
“I just love it,” he said. “I love the game. I love the sport. It opened a lot of doors for me, going in as an athlete. But the coaching side of things, to see what it does to all the new athletes, I think is something that’s really cool.”
It’s a kind of passion he gained from his mom. Being a single mother to three kids, all in two or three different sports, can put a strain on a person.
“And you never saw her struggle,” Lasher said. “How much she cares for her athletes is what I’ve been trying to do as well.”
But it was not always coaching. Lasher’s original plan going into college was to major in physical therapy. Two semesters in and a talk with his academic advisor later, he realized he was on the wrong path and quickly changed things around.
After the athletic director at Chatham took a chance on him to see what he could do, he “fell in love with it and just never looked back.”
His coaching statistics and awards prove that he made the right choice.
When Lasher was coaching at Thiel as the women’s head coach, he took a team whose record was 3-22 in the 2023 season and turned it around. The following year, he guided the Tomcats to a 17-9 record and brought them back to the conference tournament.
That following season, he turned his focus to the men’s spring season and led them to an undefeated conference season and the Presidents’ Athletic Conference (PAC) championship.
Lasher was awarded the Presidents’ Athletic Conference Coach of the Year on, not one, but two occasions. The first was during his time as women’s coach at Chatham in 2017 and then again in 2025 as Thiel’s men’s coach. But he feels the awards do not belong to just him.
“It’s the players that do the work,” Lasher said. “It shows how much we accomplish.”
Not only is he an award-winning coach, but so are the students he works with. During his time as head coach, Lasher has mentored 23 all-conference selections, two conference Newcomer of the Year award winners, and one Conference Athlete of the Year.
All of this is a testimony to his coaching style. Something he does differently from some other coaches is having fast-paced, high-energy practices.
And he plans to bring that to Slippery Rock, where he had hoped it would all begin.
He said, “[Slippery Rock] was actually my destination school whenever I was looking at schools.”
While it was the perfect location for Lasher, it unfortunately did not have men’s volleyball. But now he has come back as a head coach.
It was not just the location for him, it was also the atmosphere that Slippery Rock brings.
“Slippery Rock itself has a ton of value,” he said. “What we can do in the athletics department just speaks to the university. You can really fell the support here for the students.”
Since being here, he is already seeing the chemistry come together with a young team.
A team mainly filled with freshmen and sophomores, Lasher is seeing his upperclassmen step up.
Already, he is seeing a strong defense and service team in the beginning of the season
While it is just his first year at The Rock, he has big plans for the team. Lasher wants to put them on the map.
“My goal is to make this a place from a place where volleyball players are recruited, to a place where volleyball players want to play,” he said.
His dream is to take this team beyond the national board.
“There are teams in this conference that we play against that are already there. So why not us?”
And his way of doing that is to stick to his coaching philosophy. For Lasher, leadership is the number one thing.
“I want to build this program to where it is player-run but coach-operated,” he said.
Some steps need to be taken to get to that point. While it gives the team more freedom, it also comes with more responsibilities. And Lasher said it’s on him to get them there.
While pushing the team to do their best on the court, he’s pushing them off of it as well, in making sure they’re strong academically and that they are taken care of.
“My philosophy is just the betterment of the athlete,” Lasher said.
If nothing else, he wants his athletes to walk away with just a few things.
“Grit, resiliency, toughness, and trust.”
To Lasher, these things carry a big key value in life. While it pushes his students to be better athletes both on and off the court, it’s also what makes good people in society.
