From 1980 to 2019, Texas State volleyball fans could count on one consistency: Head Coach Karen Chisum. Chisum was the head coach of Texas State/Southwest Texas for 40 seasons before retiring with 919 career wins, six-time conference Coach of the Year, 11 conference tournament titles, and nine regular season titles. 

At the time of her retirement, Chisum was the longest tenured head coach in Texas State history. She also was the second longest tenured coach at a single school across all three NCAA divisions, the third winningest active Division I coach, the fourth winningest Division I female coach of all-time, and the eighth winningest active coach of all-time.

In short, Chisum retired as one of the best Division I volleyball coaches of all time.

Before becoming one of the most illustrious Division I volleyball coaches of all-time, Chisum was just a young woman freshly graduated from Pecos High School looking to go to college. Chisum decided, ultimately, to follow her cousin to San Marcos and come to school. Her cousin had been playing basketball for late head coach Vernon McDonald and thought, “if [my cousin] Lloyd can come up here, I can come up here.”

Little did Chisum know, she’d be living in San Marcos for more than 50 years after that.

After spending two years as an assistant coach, Chisum was promoted to head coach ahead of the 1980 season.  What started out as just her on the staff, eventually built into adding a graduate assistant and an assistant coach. She continued to build the program from an AIAW school, through Division II and into Division I.

It was in the early 2000’s when she brought Tracy Smith and Sean Huiet to join her staff. The pair would go on to both serve as associate head coach prior to Chisum’s retirement in 2019.

When Chisum brought Huiet on, she immediately realized, “he took a lot of pride in what he did. He is very knowledgeable of the game and to watch him grow as he has, has been heartwarming and wonderful… the one thing is that he’s a competitor. He could have our bottom six kids, and his team would win because he could show them how to compete.”

Huiet didn’t know it, either, when he took the job to join Chisum’s staff, that he’d spend the next 20 years of his life in maroon and gold.

“I came down to visit here and campus was amazing, they had just won a couple championships and, as a young assistant coach, I thought this would be a really cool steppingstone job,” Huiet said. “My mindset was I’ll go there for a couple years, win a couple championships and then move on with my career, and here we are 19 years later still here.”

With Chisum, Smith and Huiet working together from 2006 until Chisum’s retirement in 2019, they became the longest tenured coaching staff in all of NCAA volleyball. And although it was Chisum’s name listed as the head coach, “this was our program,” is what she’d tell people. 

“You can watch some coaching staffs out on the floor, and the head coach is the only one that says anything. The assistants are just there,” Chisum said. “But I always wanted the assistants’ input, their background was a lot different than mine and that is very beneficial.”

In the 14 seasons that Chisum, Smith and Huiet spent together they all realized one thing quickly: Texas State is the place to be. 

“This place is a magnet,” Chisum said. “It’s easy to recruit kids here on this campus, as soon as you get them here, they loved it. We ran a very personal family-oriented type program… We were going to bust it when we were on the court and we’re going to work hard, but they feel comfortable with our coaching staff too.”

Chisum was known for her open-door policy with her athletes. She prioritized allowing them to come talk with her and the assistant coaches anytime they needed. 

For Huiet, that family-oriented mindset was important to him, too, as he adopted his son Declan during his time as an assistant coach. 

“I knew I could [adopt Declan] because of the support that [Chisum], [Smith] and the staff [Texas State] had,” Huiet said. “I was comfortable bringing Declan to work a lot of the days, for a good portion [of Declan’s upbringing] I was a single dad. The Texas State community, our players, their parents, all the things that they did made it so much easier for me.”

Huiet says, now that he is the head coach, that’s a big part of how he continues to operate the program even now that Chisum has retired.

“I want my assistants to be able to have families. I want our players to see that. I want our female athletes to see other strong females and know that you can have your dream job and be a mother, you can do all those things… Coach Chisum gave me the opportunity to adopt as a single dad and really live out both my dreams of being a coach and being a dad.”

As Chisum finished her 40th season as head coach, it was family that helped her realize she was ready to retire. At the end of the 2019 season, Chisum had just won a conference title, they’d gone to the NCAA tournament, and it was finally time to take some time off, this time going to Disneyworld with her family. 

“I went to Disneyworld with my family and had three days walking around forever to think about what I wanted to do,” Chisum said. “Tracy [Smith] had kind of been talking about moving on and I thought, ‘I don’t want to have to train another associate head coach.’ I knew Sean [Huiet] was steady, but I thought Tracy was going to move on and I thought, ‘man. She’s hard to replace.’”

Chisum, who was about to turn 70, thought about what the next year would look like, and after talking it over with her partner, decided that it was time. 

“Coaching really is a young person’s profession,” Chisum said. “Those two [Sean and Tracy] helped me stay in it as long as I did… but it was just time.”

For Huiet, he found out Chisum was going to retire not long later after a conversation about the next year’s jersey order came up.

“That group of seniors wanted black jerseys and [Chisum] would not do black jerseys. So, I went into her office to ask and before I could even finish it, she said, ‘go ahead and order them’ and I almost fell over. Then she goes, ‘by the way, I’m going to retire.’”

For Huiet, he immediately started getting the question: what’s next for you?

“[Tracy and I] had been here for so long people always asked, ‘are you just waiting for her to retire?’ It wasn’t that. I loved my job. I loved where I lived. Did I want to be the next head coach? Absolutely. I think Texas State is a gold mine of a job. I didn’t want to leave Texas State.”

Fortunately, Huiet got his opportunity to be the next head coach. Now, about to enter his sixth season, Huiet has already made his mark on the record book. 

Huiet started off his first season as head coach with the program’s first-ever second-round appearance in the NCAA tournament and a conference championship. Since then, he won the 2024 Sun Belt Tournament title and has made two more NCAA tournament appearances. Huiet owns another piece of history, too, having made the 2023 NCAA Tournament as an at-large bid for the first time in program history. Huiet met one more milestone in 2024: he became the fastest head coach in program history to reach 100 career wins.

“I don’t like celebrating personal accolades,” Huiet said. “[The 100 wins] goes a lot to Coach Chisum and Tracy because of what we built. Who was already in our program. The recruits we had coming in. [That milestone] was a testament to them. I didn’t have to do too much because we already had a good group here. The culture we had built was successful.”

Despite it now being Huiet’s name listed as the head coach, you’ll still see Chisum in and around Strahan Arena, seldomly missing a match and even at a practice here and there. 

“I come to campus, and it energizes me,” Chisum said. “I feel like it’s still my program, I helped grow this. I enjoy coming up to practice, but I don’t say much. I just want to get to know the kids off the court. That’s really important to me.”

For Chisum, one of her favorite parts about retirement is that she gets to “bleed maroon” still and be a true fan of the Bobcats.

“Football and volleyball are my two loves,” she said. “So I go to see that. I go to see Ricci Woodard, I love softball, I love baseball. I love getting to know the new coaching staffs. Anything I can do to help mentor or help grow Bobcat blood, I’m all for it.”

In her retirement, Chisum is enjoying the opportunity to see the school grow in all capacities.

“[Back in the 80’s] somebody gave me a t-shirt that said ‘Texas State is a volleyball school,’ because volleyball was consistently winning,” Chisum said. “But things have changed. Look what is happening on our campus. [President] Kelly Damphousse and [Director of Athletics] Don Coryell, they’ve changed the narrative of Texas State athletics.”

As Texas State has accepted an offer to join the Pac-12 in 2026 and the school has won three of the last four Sun Belt Conference Bubas Cups, in Chisum’s eyes, there’s no better time to be a Bobcat.