Bio

Tony Trifonov enters his second season as the head volleyball coach for the Lady Saints following a historic first season at the helm.

During the first season Coach Tony Trifonov brought the Saints to their best finish in school history with a 4th place finish at the NJCAA D1 Volleyball Tournament. The Saints were 32 - 7 overall, 16 - 0 in the KJCCC and ended the season ranked 6th in the nation. Coach Trifonov was named 2018 District VI, Region VI, and KJCCC Coach of the Year. Throughout the year the Saints had players earn NJCAA National Player of the week honors, NJCAA D1 Championship 2018 All Tournament team, KJCCC Player of the Year, and 4 NJCAA Academic All-Americans. On top of the players accomplishments as a team the Saints led the nation in hitting percentage at .347 for the 2018 season.

Trifonov comes to Seward following a twenty-one-year stint with NCAA Division I Florida A&M University.  Over his twenty-one-year career with the Rattlers, Trifonov accumulated a 378-218 overall record, while going a stunning 206-10 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, winning the MEAC nineteen times. From 2001-2008, the Rattlers won 112 consecutive conference matches, the third longest streak in NCAA history.

Trifonov has shown development of players on the court, producing 45 First-Team MEAC All-Conference selections, seven MEAC Players of the Year, four Rookies of the Year, two NCAA All-Americans and an Olympian. As a coach, he was awarded the MEAC Coach of the Year on six separate occasions.

Prior to Florida A&M, Trifonov founded the Florida West Coast Volleyball Academy where he helped over 30 athletics receive NCAA Division I volleyball scholarships while competing in the Junior Olympic National Championships.

Trifonov has been involved with volleyball for the greater part of his life. He honed his playing skills in his hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria. As early as 1979, Trifonov was playing on the national level participating on the CSKA-Sofia Junior Clubb tema that won three national championships and the Bulgarian Junior National team. He continued to develop as a player and moved onto the professional ranks playing with Minyor-Pernik and CSKA-Sofia professional teams.

He crossed over into the coaching ranks at age of 21 and led the Minyor -Pernik Junior team to a national title, and was also an assistant coach for the Academic-Sofia women's professional team that finished in third place at the Bulgarian pro league championship. Trifonov continued his playing career on the Bulgarian National team that finished sixth in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea.