New Volleyball/Soccer Coach Hired at LHS

La Grange ISD approved the hiring of a new head volleyball and head girls soccer coach Monday – Brittany Oruonyehu.

For the last four years she has served as the head coach of both those sports at El Campo and is just a few days removed from a run all the way to the soccer state semifinals.

“I’m really excited about the opportunity,” Oruonyehu said. “Both programs at La Grange have everything they need to be really successful. We just need to go out and do it.”

Oruonyehu is a native of Austin. Her husband works in Bastrop and she is excited about the opportunity to be closer to family, while working in La Grange.

“We’re really excited about her,” said La Grange athletic director Kyle Cooper. “She has a really vivacious personality, brings a ton of energy to the room and is super positive.”

Oruonyehu replaces departing La Grange volleyball coach Leslie Coltrain and soccer coach Lauren Hubbert.

The success Oruonyehu had at El Campo is hard to ignore.

“Both teams had potential, they just needed some loving on,” she said.

She was 22-14 this year in volleyball and 10-3 in district.

In soccer her first year at El Campo the team went 0-15 and only scored three goals all year.

“I told the girls we can’t keep doing this. We’ve got to work harder, get in some leagues,” she said.

She got some of her girl athletes playing against boys in a soccer league in El Campo. They made it to the playoffs for the first time in school history her second year and won their first playoff game her third year before this year’s run to the state semifinals during which they had a 24-4-1 record.

Oruonyehu was a threesport star athlete at Austin Travis High School, and turned down a full scholarship to Huston-Tillotson University in Austin as a volleyball setter to instead go to Texas State.

“I was tired,” she laughed at that decision.

After graduating from Texas State she worked for a year in Austin ISD, before being hired as the head volleyball coach at Smithville, and eventually working her way up to girls athletic coordinator there.

Then she worked two years as head volleyball and assistant soccer coach at Gonzales before her four years at El Campo.

Particularly, at those stops in Smithville and Gonzales, she got to compete against La Grange a lot.

“We’d always play La Grange and they had such a great tradition of success, and I always wanted to be a part of a program like that,” she said.

Oruonyehu and her husband have three kids. Their oldest son will be starting 7th grade at LMS next year.

They also have a sevenyear- old son and a four-yearold daughter.