Volleyball
- Title:
- Head Coach
Tina (Burcham) Seals, who during her collegiate career became one of Mississippi State University’s first standout volleyball performers, is in her fifth season as head coach of MSU’s Volleyball Bulldogs.
Seals joined the Mississippi State University Athletic Department staff in March 2004, becoming the ninth head coach in the history of State’s 34-year old volleyball program.
Over the course of four seasons, the Florence, Ala., native has engineered an impressive resurgence in the Mississippi State volleyball program, guiding State to back-to-back winning campaigns in 2005 and 2006 while climbing the ladder as one of MSU volleyball’s most successful coaches.
Seals’ State teams have compiled a 58-58 mark, tying or setting school records for conference wins in three of her four seasons while establishing the school mark for homecourt wins.
In 2004, her first season at the MSU helm, Seals guided the Bulldogs to a 14-16 worksheet, an 11-win gain over the 2003 edition and one of the program’s biggest season-to-season turnarounds. That ?03 team, projected for a last place SEC finish, tied a school record with five league wins and finished tied for eighth in the overall SEC standings, just missing a berth in the eight-team field of the SEC tournament. That MSU team, climbed 111 spots to a No. 156 final national ranking by RichKern.com.
Seals’ 2005 edition climbed further up the ladder, posting a 15-12 worksheet, the program’s seventh winning campaign in 31 seasons and only its second in 13 seasons. Along the way the Bulldogs established a school record with six SEC wins and earned the school’s first berth in the SEC Tournament since qualification standards were put in place following the 1998 season.
During the 2005 season RichKern.com ranked the Bulldogs as high as No. 66 --- the highest in-season national ranking ever for a Mississippi State volleyball. After spending much of the year ranked in the top 100, State finished the year at No. 111, also a school-best. The ?06 Bulldogs begin the year with a Pablo system ranking of No. 77.
State’s success story continued in 2006 when the Bulldogs raced to a 10-1 started en route to a 17-13 finish, the most wins in program history since 1996. State again set the school standard for conference wins, registering eight victories in rugged league competition. MSU swept a pair of SEC series (vs. Mississippi and South Carolina) for just the second time in school history and closed out the season with a program-first win over SEC West power and 2006 NCAA Tournament entrant Arkansas. That season-ending win at home was MSU’s school-record 10th.
Injuries impeded the Bulldogs’ progress in 2007, but Mississippi State still managed to register season series sweeps of divisional foes Arkansas and Auburn and notch its first win over SEC East power Tennessee since 1996.
Seals has maintained an emphasis on academic excellence during her coaching tenure at MSU. The number of Bulldog players represented on the annual SEC Academic Honor Roll has climbed in each of Seals’ first four seasons at State, including a school-record nine selections in 2007-08. Including five first-year players featured on the SEC Freshman Academic Honor Roll, 14 of State’s 15 rostered players earned academic all-conference plaudits last year.
Prior to coming to MSU Seals enjoyed a highly-successful 12-year run as volleyball coach at Northwest-Shoals Community College in Muscle Shoals, Ala.
A native of Florence, Ala., she launched her coaching career at Northwest-Shoals C.C. in 1992, the inaugural year for the sport at NW-SCC. She quickly built the program into a perennial power in the Alabama junior college ranks, compiling a remarkable 444-137 record (.764) in 12 seasons.
Seals’ first team posted a 28-12 record and finished runner-up in Alabama. Her teams won 30 or more matches over the next 11 seasons. In 12 seasons the Patriots claimed seven state junior college titles and took runner-up honors four times. Her last five teams concluded play with top 20 rankings, including the 2000 edition that posted a 47-9 record and a school-highest No. 2 national ranking.
Seals guided the Patriots to the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division I or Division II national volleyball tournament seven times during her term there. And she directed NW-SCC to top 10 national rankings in three of her last five seasons at Northwest-Shoals.
Eight players coached by Seals at NWCSS were accorded All-America team accolades while 10 of her players also earned Academic All-America team honors.
Seals’ accomplishments did not go unnoticed. She was honored as the Tachikara/AVCA Regional Coach of the Year in 1999, 2000 and 2002 and seven times was recognized as the Alabama Junior College Coach of the Year. During her term at NW-SCC Seals tutored nearly 50 players advanced their volleyball careers with athletic scholarships at four-year colleges and universities.
Seals signed a volleyball scholarship with Mississippi State University in 1981 following a stellar prep career at Bradshaw High School, where she was a three-sport athlete. She earned all-state honors in volleyball and also competed in basketball and on the BHS track team.
She was recruited to Mississippi State by coach Gina Jacobellis and played her first two seasons at MSU for coach Lynn Keiser (1981 and 1982). Seals concluded her playing career competing her final two seasons for coach Vivian Langley, becoming one of MSU’s initial four-year letterwinners in volleyball. She served as team captain in 1982, 1983 and 1984.
Following her sophomore season she was selected to play for the touring Athletes in Action volleyball team that competed in China and Japan in the summer of 1983. The successful AIA Asian tour helped advance her career and set the stage for a career-best senior season at Mississippi State in 1984, a campaign in which she paced the Bulldogs with 387 kills and a .316 hitting percentage, still the fourth-best single season hitting mark in 33 seasons of State volleyball. For her exploits Seals was accorded first-team All-Southeastern Conference honors as a senior, becoming the first Mississippi State player to earn such distinction.
The MSU standout was also a member of the MSU softball team during her college career, earning a varsity letter as an outfielder in 1983.
Seals got her first taste of coaching as an undergraduate assistant on Langley’s MSU volleyball staff in 1985 team before earning a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1987.
Following graduation she worked four years as an engineer with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Her involvement with volleyball continued during that span when she formed and directed a club volleyball program in Muscle Shoals. She later earned her master’s degree in math education at the University of North Alabama in 1994.
Seals has been active in the development of youth volleyball throughout her career. She founded the Golden Triangle Volleyball Club and the Mississippi State Juniors Club in 2004 and has also been a guiding force behind the establishment of summer youth volleyball camps on the MSU campus. USA Volleyball honored Seals in 2008 for her efforts to promote club volleyball with a Robert L. Lindsay Meritorious Service Award for the USVBA Delta Region.
During her MSU career she met and married Tony Seals, a native of Winfield, Ala., and a 1986 graduate of Mississippi State University. They are the parents of a daughter, Tracey Marie, a senior at Starkville High School. The Seals are a host family for Takatoshi Sato, an international exchange student from Fukuyama, Japan.
Playing Career
- Lettered four seasons for Mississippi State University in volleyball (1981-84)
- Also lettered two seasons for MSU in softball (1982-83)
Coaching Career
- 1992-2003: Head Coach, Northwest-Shoals (Ala.) Community College
- 2004-present: Head Coach, Mississippi State University
