Joseph Agrest is in his first season as head coach of the women's volleyball team at Yeshiva University.
Agrest has more than thirty years experience in coaching volleyball. Prior to Yeshiva, his most recent appointment at the collegeiate level was head women's volleyball coach at St. Peter's University, a Division I institution in Jersey City, N.J. where he led the Peacocks to 28 wins from 2008-10. Fifteen of his student-athletes were named to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) All- Academic team.
Prior to that, Agrest served as head women's volleyball coach at Globe Institute of Technology, an NJCAA Division I member in New York City, in 2005 where he led the program to a 16-8 record and the NJCAA District IX runner-up spot that year.
A Gorkiy, USSR (now Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia) native, Agrest's volleyball coaching experience also includes coaching boy's and girl's volleyball teams at a school in Gryazi, Russia from 1982-92. In 2001 he founded and coached a junior volleyball program at the Jewish Community House in Brooklyn, N.Y. The program has been regular participants at the International Junior Maccabi Games since 2003 and includes a gold medal at the games in 2010.
Aside from coaching, Agrest has a rich past. He graduated from Gorkovskiy Merchant Military Academy in the USSR with a 3.97 grade point average and full Lieutenant Rank in 1982. He was a member of its men's volleyball team from 1979-82, where the team won the USSR Army National Championship in his latter two seasons there.