Lee McBride enters his first season as the head coach of the Lady Lions, elevated to the position in January of 2025 after a season as Southeastern’s associate head coach. The Port Neches, Texas native brought a championship head coaching pedigree within the Southland Conference with him to Hammond, America in his return to the collegiate ranks.
McBride started his collegiate coaching career at another Southland school in Lamar, working as an assistant for the Cardinals for six years under legendary head coach Katrinka Jo Crawford, the person for whom the SLC’s Coach of the Year award is named, an award which has called Hammond home for the past two seasons. During his five years in Beaumont, his teams won two conference championships, resulting in his first two trips to the NCAA National Championship Tournament.
He then made the move to Lake Charles to take over the head job of another Southland Conference institution, McNeese. That move started a 14-year run of success for the Cowgirls which included six 20-win seasons, earned rankings in regional standings, another Southland Conference championship, a SLC Coach of the Year award, and five Louisiana Coach of the Year honors, all during a time of immense success for the Southland as a whole on the national level in the sport of volleyball. In his 14 years at McNeese, players he coached earned 14 All-Southland First Team awards, six All-Conference Second Team honors, a Conference Freshman of the Year, a SLC Newcomer of the Year, 25 All-Louisiana Team members, three Louisiana Players of the Year, and a Louisiana Freshman of the Year. When he stepped down as the head coach of the Cowgirls following the 2003 season, he had amassed a 254-181 record during his tenure. His 254 wins and .584 winning percentage are still the best in the McNeese program’s history while the conference championship his team won in 1997 is still the only SLC Title the Cowgirls have won.
His teams also shined bright in the classroom, consistently having the best GPA among McNeese’s sports teams during his tenure.Â
In 2004, he decided to move into McNeese’s kinesiology department, working as an assistnat professor. It was there where he advised and mentored a student who would bring Southeastern to the top of the Southland during a six-year run of immense success, Jeremy White. The two coached together at Barbe High School in Lake Charles, but would eventually go their separate ways, though they never lost touch as they continued to talk about their shared love of the sport of volleyball. McBride would continue coaching on the high school level, running both volleyball and tennis teams, for the next two decades.
White would eventually bring McBride back to the collegiate game in 2024, naming him associate head coach at Southeastern. With White and McBride together again, the 2024 Lady Lions team rolled off 26-straight wins, which was the nation’s longest win streak at the time and a new SLU program record, and included a 16-0 record in Southland Conference play on the team’s way to the SLC’s regular season championship. That was the first time a Southeastern volleyball team went undefeated through the conference schedule since SLU joined the Southland.
McBride is married to the former Barrette Brown. The couple has three adult children - Maggie, Nolan, & Harrison.
