Haley Brightwell, a former Tritons volleyball player who earned a BSBA in management in the spring of 2014 and went on to complete her MBA at UMSL, is currently in her first season as an assistant coach with the Indy Ignite of Major League Volleyball, following a five-year stint coaching professionally in Switzerland. (Photos courtesy of Indy Ignite)
Truth be told, Haley Brightwell knew very little about the University of Missouri–St. Louis when she first considered transferring. Fourteen years later, Brightwell says becoming a Triton might be the most impactful decision she has ever made.
“Honestly, and I’m not even exaggerating, I credit UMSL with everything that I am today,” said Brightwell, now an assistant coach with the Indy Ignite of Major League Volleyball, the country’s top professional league, which commenced play in 2024.
It was the early 2010s when Brightwell, then a volleyball player at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, began to think that she needed to make a change. The coach who had recruited Brightwell, a native of Cedar Rapids, left the program after Brightwell’s redshirt freshman season in 2010, and though she remained with Drake for another year to give the new coach a chance, Brightwell said it became obvious that the situation was not working for her.
It was her mother who initially brought UMSL into the conversation. Members of the Tritons volleyball team had traveled to Drake in the spring of 2011 for some offseason competition, and they made an impression.
“When I decided to transfer, my mom and I were talking, and she was like, ‘Do you remember that Division II team from St Louis? They had a lot of Iowa girls on it. It looked like a good squad. They have a new coach. Do you want to look there?’” Brightwell recalled.
She eventually contacted that new Tritons coach, Ryan Young. Soon after, she made a visit to the UMSL campus.
“And I never really looked back,” Brightwell said.
Assistant coach Haley Brightwell (center) celebrates along with the Indy Ignite, who are 15-3 and in first place in the eight-team Major League Volleyball.
Brightwell said she knew UMSL was the right place for her from the moment she stepped on campus because of how she immediately felt valued by people like former Director of Athletics Lori Flanagan and Jessie Chandler, then the Assistant Director of Athletics for Compliance and Senior Women’s Administrator who is now the Senior Associate Director of Athletics.
“I go to UMSL, and literally the first person I meet, it was Lori, and she already knew me,” Brightwell said. “She knew my name, she knew I was from Drake, she knew what questions to ask me. I went to meet Jess, and she was the same, and then it was true everywhere I went. The advisors, the business department, everyone was incredibly supportive of me, and it just felt like they also knew me personally, even after first meeting them.”
Brightwell would play three seasons (2012-14) with UMSL, serving a stint as president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She was a graduate student in her final season, having already earned a BSBA in management in the spring of 2014.
After exhausting her eligibility, she moved into a graduate assistant position on Young’s staff in 2015 while completing her MBA. Then she hung around as a paid, part-time assistant for an additional two seasons, in 2016 and 2017.
“Right off the bat, I knew she would be a good fit for our program,” said Young, who finished his 15th season as UMSL’s head coach last fall. “Just her personality, her drive, her overall demeanor was something we were looking for not only in a volleyball player, but then just as a person. We’re always looking for quality people to play for us, people who can then come back and help coach, and Haley checked that box on a lot of different levels. I really enjoyed talking volleyball with her, and Haley obviously had a deep passion for the game. She did really great things for us on the court and then off the court as a coach as well.”
Brightwell said during those seasons working alongside Young, it dawned on her that she wanted to pursue coaching as her full-time career.
“I loved volleyball, and I wanted to be around it,” Brightwell said. “And I can remember I was trying all these other jobs and doing all these other things, but I was spending most of my time thinking about coaching, even though at that moment, it was … the job that provided me the least and was secondary to all these other things I was doing. But I was giving all of my time to it, and then I started to think about it, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is it, this is what I want to be giving all of my energy to. So, why don’t I just lean into it a little bit more?’ And it was no looking back from there. I was in.”
During the summer of 2018, Brightwell was hired as the director of operations at the University of Southern California. The role gave her a unique insight into one of the premiere collegiate programs in the sport.
“It introduced me to really high stakes sports, which was very helpful, and then I got to see the ups and downs of coaching in that high-stakes environment without it being on my shoulders,” Brightwell said. “I got to work with the coaches firsthand and see how they worked with the athletes, and even though it wasn’t a coaching role, it was pivotal to me becoming the coach that I am right now.”
Brightwell spent two seasons with USC, but when the COVID-19 shutdowns happened in 2020, she took a chance and went overseas to coach professional volleyball in Europe. Brightwell joined the staff of Viteos NUC, a volleyball club in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, to work as an assistant to Lauren Bertolacci, whom Brightwell had met about two years prior.
Haley Brightwell (left) is in her sixth season as an assistant coach under Lauren Bertolacci (center). The two, who were married in April 2025, coached together for five years in Switzerland before joining the staff of Major League Volleyball’s Indy Ignite.
“She is an outstanding teacher, with an important ability to communicate clearly and help athletes understand the game,” Bertolacci said of Brightwell. “Her work is purposeful and always centered on helping players improve in a way that transfers directly to competition.”
It wasn’t just a huge change professionally for Brightwell, who joined a small, exclusive club as an American coaching in a European pro league. It was also a significant move personally because Brightwell and Bertolacci had started dating shortly after they met near the end of 2018.
After spending a year and a half in what Brightwell called “the longest distance relationship that you can find,” with one in Los Angeles and the other in Switzerland, they could grow their relationship together. The two wound up coaching together for five seasons in Switzerland and got married in April 2025.
But soon after such a personal high, they were hit with a professional low. Brightwell and Bertolacci left Viteos NUC to take coaching positions with a major club in France, but with the ink on their contracts barely dry, the club declared bankruptcy.
“So, all of a sudden, Lauren and I both lost our jobs at the same time, and our place of living as well,” Brightwell said. “We lost everything. It was rough. It was really rough.”
Another door soon opened with the Indy Ignite, which had just completed its first season in the fledgling MLV. The team was making changes on the coaching staff, and before she knew it, Brightwell was telling her family in Iowa that she would now be coaching just a few hours away.
“That was a stunning, stunning conversation,” Brightwell said. “They really freaked out.”
Brightwell and Bertolacci took an unconventional route to Indianapolis, but the results have been undeniable, with the Ignite sporting a 15-3 record so far in their first season. The team is in first place in the eight-team MLV.
Young isn’t surprised by Brightwell’s success.
“She’s always been ready for the next steps and the next challenge,” Young said. “As a person, she’s always looking to challenge herself and try something new.”
And Brightwell, who was on campus for an alumni event in September for the first time since before she moved to Switzerland, said she remains forever grateful to UMSL for setting her on the path that she has chosen.
“UMSL gave me everything” she said, “and more.”
