Coaching Staff

Justin Sanders | Assistant Coach

Justin Sanders enters his first season as an assistant coach at USC Upstate during the 2023 season after being announced to the coaching staff on January 17, 2023.

Sanders joins the program after a three-year stint working alongside Skayhan at Wofford College with the pair helping to engineer one of the most historic stretches of Terrier volleyball. In his three seasons with the program, Wofford achieved its best Southern Conference regular season finish, its second SoCon Championship Game appearance, and had nine players earn All-Conference honors.

A standout middle blocker during his club career, a middle blocker has garnered All-Conference honors in each of his five seasons as an assistant coach with multiple setters earning All-SoCon honors in each of his three seasons at Wofford. He also oversaw the development of the lone Terrier—middle blocker Sarah Barham—to garner three All-SoCon honors in her career.

During his final season at Wofford, Sanders helped guide the most efficient offense in program history as the Terriers hit .226 as a team with middle blocker Millie Loehr finishing the season ranked 25th in the NCAA in hitting efficiency (.391; the best single-season hitting percentage in program history). Loehr and fellow middle blocker Barham garnered Second Team All-SoCon honors while setter Victoria Hensley earned All-Freshman Team honors.

In 2021, the Terriers claimed their best-ever SoCon finish, tying for third in the regular season standings and earning the No. 4 overall seed in the SoCon Tournament, culminating the season with a run to the tournament's Championship Game—the second-ever appearance for the program.

Wofford's offense set a then-program record for team hitting efficiency, hitting .213 as a team while the team's defense posted the second-most total blocks (259.0) in program history. Leading to her Second Team All-SoCon honors, Barham established the program record for single-season total blocks, tallying 138 on the campaign—the 29th most in the NCAA that season. Setter Emily Hodsdon and middle blocker Sarah MacLean also garnered All-Conference honors, earning Second Team and All-Freshman honors, respectively.

Sanders' first season with the Wofford program, the pandemic shortened 2020-21 season, saw middle blocker Riley Coonan become one of the most decorated players in Terrier history, earning SoCon All-Tournament Team honors, First Team All-SoCon honors, AVCA Honorable Mention All-Region honors—the first such honors for a Terrier in program history—and CoSIDA Academic All-District honors. Coonan wasn't the only Sanders tutored middle blocker to earn All-Conference honors as Barham earned Second Team and All-Freshman honors.

Before coming to the Sparkle City, Sanders spent two seasons as an assistant coach at Jacksonville State, helping the program earn its first regular season conference championship in 10 seasons and earning its first conference tournament victory in nine seasons. In 2019, the Gamecocks captured the Ohio Valley Conference regular season championship as three players, including middle blocker Kaylee Frear, were selected First Team All-OVC. In his first season in 2018, three players earned All-Conference honors led by middle blocker Mackenzie Rombach (First Team) with Frear also earning Second Team honors.

Before embarking on his coaching career, Sanders spent three seasons (2015-17) as a student manager at Kentucky. During his time with the Wildcats, he was a part of three NCAA Tournament teams, including the 2017 team that captured the program's first Southeastern Conference title since 1988 and advanced to the program's first-ever Elite Eight.

During his time at Kentucky, he also competed as a middle blocker for the Wildcats' men's volleyball club team, serving as the team's captain in 2017 and 2018. During his final season, he helped the team to the National Collegiate Volleyball Federation Final Four.

A native of Nicholasville, Ky., Sanders graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from Kentucky in 2018. He and his wife, Emily, and daughter, Aurora, reside in Spartanburg.