Mark Birtwistle

Head Coach Mark Birtwistle has been at the helm of Eastern University Volleyball since 1990. In the 2023 MAC Commonwealth Championship match, Birtwistle earned his 800th career win. Now, with nearly 850 career wins, Birtwistle ranks second on the All-Time Career Wins list for active NCAA DIII volleyball coaches. He is one of only eight coaches in Division III history to reach 800 wins. He has been named the conference Coach of the Year 10 times and earned AVCA Mid-Atlantic Region Coach of the Year six times in 2002, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2016.

Eastern Volleyball enjoyed a run of 10 consecutive seasons being ranked in the AVCA top 25, and remains the only program at Eastern to advance to the NCAA Final Four. In addition, Eastern Women's Volleyball has made three trips to the NCAA Elite Eight.  

Eastern has won 24 conference championships and competed in the NCAA Tournament 22 times. The program reached the NCAA Sweet Sixteen 10 times and set a program record,15 consecutive first-round victories in the NCAA Tournament.

Birtwistle and his coaching staff have trained and mentored over 100 All-Conference players, 50 All-Region selections and 40 All-Americans.  Eastern Volleyball is proud to be the only program, at any division, to have two classmates be 4-time All-Americans and is also one of only three programs in the history of NCAA DIII volleyball to have 3 players be 4-time All-Americans.

Birtwistle’s players have also been successful in the classroom earning a team GPA over 3.0 for more than a decade and earned the AVCA’s Team Academic Honor Roll Award indicating Eastern’s team GPA is in the top 20% of all schools in the nation. Eastern volleyball players have been named CoSIDA Academic All-Americans, Conference Senior Scholar-Athletes and more than 100 individuals have been named to the MAC Academic Honor Roll since 2008. In 2014 and 2015, two different individuals were named the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Academic All-Area Performer of the Year. That award is given to only one athlete for all the area colleges and universities in each of the three levels of NCAA competition.

Coach Birtwistle is a 2021 Eastern University Hall of Honor inductee. He is the only active head coach with the honor.  A year later he was also inducted into the Hall with his 2011 Women’s Volleyball team who finished with the year with a 36-3 record and advanced to the NCAA Division III Final Four.

Birtwistle and his wife Heidi, Eastern’s Senior Associate Athletic Director, reside in Downingtown.  They have a daughter, Ali, who is a teacher in Denver, Colo. and a son, Jackson, who played 3 seasons of lacrosse at Syracuse University and is playing his last season for the Ohio State University.

Head Coach Mark Birtwistle- Year-by-Year results

Contact Coach Birtwistle:
610-341-1784 (O), 610-247-0626 (C)
mbirtwis@eastern.edu

8.12.25