Nick Tran took over as head coach of the York women’s volleyball team in 2009-10 after two years as an assistant.

He earned his first OUA coach of the year award in 2011-12 after leading the Lions to a 16-2 mark in the regular season, a first-place standing in the conference and a national ranking of No. 8.

In his time as an assistant, the Lions went 30-8 in regular-season play and ended 2008-09 as OUA champions. This year the team had its best result under his guidance, winning the OUA East division and finishing fourth at the OUA championships.

Tran was the recipient of the Ontario Volleyball Association Coach of the Year award in 2005 and he also runs a successful Vipers volleyball club in Toronto. Previously, he was an assistant coach for the provincial team and an assistant coach for the gold-medal winning Region 5 team at the provincial championship. Tran was a member of the coaching staff for the 2009 Canada Games Provincial Team that competed in P.E.I. at the Canada Games.

A strong supporter of Athlete Development programs, he has been involved with the Ontario Volleyball Association (OVA) development programs for the past 10 years in several different capacities and is currently the Chair of one of the OVA’s Long-Term Athlete Development committees looking at the Learning to Compete Stage and the Training to Compete Stage.

In addition to his coaching duties, Tran is the principal of Bloordale Middle School, a medium-sized middle school within the Toronto District School Board. He believes that schools today are teaching a generation of students who, in most cases, are more technologically knowledgeable than their parents and teachers. In order to engage students in their own learning, he believes that we must recognize the power of technology and actively implement it to improve the teaching and learning process on a daily basis. 

Prior to becoming Principal, Tran taught Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to middle school students where he was a co-recipient, along with Ben Tran, of the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence: Certificate of Achievement. He received this prestigious award for recognizing and using the teaching potential of ICT to its fullest while assembling a state-of-the-art ICT facility to facilitate the integration of information and communication technology across the curriculum. 

Ben Tran joined the Lions women’s volleyball team in 2008-09 as an assistant coach and helped guide the team to its first provincial championship in 12 years.

He began his coaching experience with the Scarborough Solars club team and has since moved on to running the Vipers club program he cofounded. He has successfully developed several programs with the Vipers, including leading a team to the Canadian National East Championship title in 2005.

Tran is also the principal of Hilltop Middle School, which is a dual-track school offering both English and French immersion instruction to approximately 520 students.