Lauren Plum

With a wealth of playing and coaching experience both collegiately and on the international level, Vanderbilt head volleyball coach Anders Nelson announced in February the hiring of Lauren Plum as assistant coach.

In addition to coaching at the NCAA Division I level the last two seasons, Plum played as an undergrad at Oregon, and has competed for Team USA and in multiple professional leagues overseas during her career.

Her responsibilities on the staff will include serving as offensive coordinator as well as combining with Corbelli to lead the Dores’ recruiting efforts.

Plum first entered the coaching profession at Villanova in 2020, helping guide the Wildcats in the spring due to the Covid pandemic as well as the following season. After serving as an assistant in the spring of 2022 at Arizona, where her focus was on recruiting, she joined the staff at Notre Dame as a volunteer assistant last fall. With the Fighting Irish, she helped implement and execute serving and setting scouting reports while also assisting with overall scouting reports and team and individual film reviews. Plum also has experience coaching with the East Coast Power VBC, and was the interim assistant director of the Coast VBC from 2015-20.

A four-year letterwinner at Oregon—where she helped the Ducks make three NCAA Tournament appearances highlighted by a berth in the 2012 national championship match—Plum was a two-time All-America and All-Pac 12 selection and was chosen the league’s Setter of the Year as a junior. She set school records with 75 assists in a match and 1,618 in a season, and remains the Ducks’ all-time leader with 5,213 assists as well.

Plum was a member of the USA Junior National Team that competed at the World Junior Championships in Lima, Peru, in 2011, and the UA2 National Team Training Squad from 2014-17. She played professionally in leagues in France, Germany and Puerto Rico from 2014-20.

Plum—a 2014 Oregon graduate with a business degree—is the second assistant to be hired by Nelson this year, joining Russell Corbelli who came to Vanderbilt in January. The Commodore program will make its official on-court debut in 2025.