COACHING STAFF

Jenifer Bahner | Head Coach

Jenifer Bahner-Hill enters her ninth season as Drury’s head volleyball coach in 2022. She has never had a losing season in eight years as Drury's head coach and has led the program to its first-ever NCAA-II Tournament appearance and their first regular season conference championship in 2018. 

In 2021, the Panthers were 20-11, they posted a 12-3 record at the O'Reilly Family Event Center, and featured three all-conference selections, including Taylor Forth, who was named to the First Team.

In the 2020-21 academic year, the fall sports schedule moved to the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and an 18-game conference schedule was played. Drury went 9-9 and two players were named to the All-GLVC team.

In 2018, Bahner-Hill led the Panthers to their best-ever record as an NCAA-II program as they went 28-7, won a co-conference championship for the first time in team history going 15-3 in the GLVC, they earned their first-ever bid to the NCAA-II tournament, and were awarded a host bid to the Midwest Regional. The Panthers advanced to the second round of the national tournament after an opening-round win over Hillsdale. The season also produced five all-conference selections, three All-Midwest Region performers, and the program's first NCAA-II All-Americans as Bentley Mara and Kendra Sater were both honorable mention honorees at the national level.

Her team followed their break-through season going 11-4 in the GLVC and finished just one game out of first place in league standings. Drury went 17-16 overall in 2019.

Through eight seasons, she owns a 150-89 (.628) record and has gone 82-59 (.582) in conference play. She ranks second at Drury in career wins in the program’s 48-year history trailing only Barb Cowherd’s 487 victories accumulated during her 20 seasons as head coach, and Bahner-Hill's winning percentage of .628 ranks first in program history. She won her 100th career game as Drury's coach on Oct. 27, 2018 in a 3-2 win over Truman State at the O'Reilly Family Event Center.

Drury her tenure, the Panthers have produced 16 all-conference performers, three All-Midwest Region picks, and two All-Americans.  

Bahner-Hill was inducted into the Cowley College Athletics Hall of Fame in January of 2019 and has been a two-time recipient of the AVCA's 'Thirty-Under-Thirty' award.

In 2017, she was inducted into the National Junior College Athletic Association Hall of Fame for her work at Cowley County (Kan.) Community College, where her teams compiled a record of 177-16 during her five years as a head coach. Her squads won two national junior college championships, finished as the national runner-up twice, posted one third-place finish, and won the Jayhawk East Conference in each of her five seasons as head coach. She was named NJCAA National Coach of the Year twice during her tenure.

In 2009, Bahner-Hill led Cowley to a 32-5 record and national runner-up finish (losing in five sets to Illinois Central), earning District Coach of the Year honors at age 24.

The following season saw her squad finish 34-4, post a 29-game winning streak, and finish third at the national tournament. That set the stage for the school's run to a first-ever national volleyball championship in 2011 when her Tigers went 38-2 and ended the year on a 22-match winning streak by beating Oakland (Mich.) in the finals. The Tigers didn't lose a match again until the national title game in 2012 when Grand Rapids snapped their 60-game winning streak.

Her final Tigers squad rolled into the title game against a 52-2 Parkland team and emerged with the five-set victory and won the Jayhawk East Conference title for a fourth straight year while extending the school's home-court winning streak to 60 matches with a squad that featured four JUCO All-America selections.

She also serves as a coach for 417 Volleyball and is the head coach for the 16 year-old national group.

Bahner-Hill played collegiately at Baker (Kan.) University where she graduated magna cum laude. She began her coaching career at Pittsburg State as a graduate assistant, helping PSU to a pair of top 25-finishes and NCAA-II tournament berths in her two years with the program.

Jenifer has two daughters, Paityn (9) and Emersyn Grace (6). She married Nathan Hill in the summer of 2022 and the family resides in Springfield.

Julia Krebs | Assistant Coach

Julia Krebs will be in her second season as a Drury assistant coach in 2022. She helped the Panthers to a 20-11 record in her first year with the program in 2021 and three DU players were named to the all-conference list.  

Krebs joined the Panthers from the University of the Southwest, where she served as the head coach for the New Mexico-based program in the NAIA in 2020-21. In her lone season leading the program, her Mustangs were limited to only 16 matches due to the coronavirus pandemic. Krebs served as a graduate assistant coach at Avila University in Kansas City from 2018 to 2019, and she was a student-assistant coach for the men's volleyball squad at Missouri Valley College following her playing career with the Vikings in 2017.

In addition to her work at Drury, Krebs is also an Assistant Director for 417 Volleyball and serves as the head coach of the organization's national team for the 15 year-old group.

Playing for Missouri Valley, Krebs helped the Vikings to a 33-11 record during her senior year in 2017. She received academic honors as a two-time recipient of the NAIA's Scholar-Athlete award and earned her team's Champions of Character award in 2017.