Amy Gardner enters her fourth season as Drury’s head volleyball coach with an experienced squad, losing four seniors off of last season’s Panther squad that put together marks of 13-16 overall and 6-10 in its second season as a member of the Great Lakes Valley Conference.

Gardner’s first Drury team (2004) wound up with a 16-19 mark and advanced to the finals of the Heartland Conference tournament, winning eight of its final 10 matches to finish with a flurry.

Her Panther teams have maintained the tradition of excellence in the classroom, earning recognition by the American Volleyball Coaches Association for 10 straight years - by maintaining at least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average on a 4.0 scale.

When Gardner assumed the head coaching job in 2004, after two seasons as the head coach and one as an assistant at NCAA Division I North Carolina-Wilmington, it was a return home.

She’s a 1991 graduate of Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State) and a former star for the VolleyBears.

Upon graduating from SMS, Gardner developed highly successful high school programs at Verona and Rogersville from 1993-97, then returned to the college game as an assistant coach at SMS and later, Drury (1999 and 2000).

The former prep volleyball and basketball standout at Camdenton High School then headed to UNC-Wilmington for her first taste of D-I head coaching experience.