When Dani Elmore was a student at Industrial High School, located roughly 30 miles east of Victoria, sports were her life.
Elmore earned five varsity letters – all in her underclassmen years. Cross country, basketball and track as a freshman. And then volleyball and softball as a sophomore.
“I did everything and it was crazy busy,” Elmore said. “But I absolutely loved being around and being in different things. Being inside, being outside. These kids can do it. They just have to be taught the credit way to do it. You still have to take time and be a kid. But you also have to prioritize your time. I want to help teach them that.”
Elmore is looking to bring that exact mentality to the Porter Spartans volleyball program. She was hired this past spring after Doris Elizondo led the program since 2017.
Elmore most recently served as an assistant at Oak Ridge (her second stint there) and was the head coach at Atascocita from 2018-20.
After her third season at Atascocita, Elmore decided to step down with family in mind and to slow things down and re-evaluate life.
After two years at Oak Ridge serving under head coach Tommie Lynne Sledge for the second time in her career, the Porter job opened and Elmore jumped at it.
“I just thought that was somewhere where I’d like to be,” Elmore said. “There’s nothing against 6A. I had a great time at Oak Ridge and Atascocita. I just wanted something a little smaller to get back into head coaching.”
Elmore, who played collegiately at Victoria College and the University of Houston-Victoria, got her start in coaching at the collegiate level.
Elmore dabbled in coaching younger kids while in high school.
“Just being able to teach what I love to someone else – I don’t know how to explain it – but just to continue to do that and stay within sports – that’s what really bit me” she said of the coaching bug. “When I started college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Just figuring that out and sucked into that world, I thought ‘This is what I want to do the rest of my life.’”
In 2015, Elmore thought she had her first varsity high school head coaching job lined up in the Greater Houston area, but it fell through at the last moment.
Elmore, at the time, applied for an assistant job under coach Terri Wade at The Woodlands. But that job was filled. Wade personally reached out to Elmore and recommended contacting Sledge at Oak Ridge.
“That’s my foot in the door into big time volleyball,” Elmore said. “I just never looked back from there.”
Oak Ridge reached the state tournament in 2015 and 2016. Learning from Sledge and those teams was paramount to Elmore.
“That first time we were at Oak Ridge together, I tried to soak up as much as possible,” Elmore said of Sledge. “I was young and I thought I could learn some things. Just the way that she is with her coaching, her encouragement, her leadership and creating the whole total package athlete on and off the court. It just opened my eyes to how much more there was out there to learn.”
By 2018, Elmore was at Atascocita and in charge of a program for the first time.
“I felt like we did a really good job building a program,” Elmore said of her time there. “When I came in, it was at the end of school. I didn’t get any time with them before summer started. We missed the playoffs that first year and then the next two years we made the playoffs.”
In her final season with the Eagles – the out-of-the-normal 2020 season that was altered by COVID-19 – the team went 17-7, split with rival Kingwood, finished third in district and went two rounds deep in the playoffs.
“My second year was a really special year,” Elmore said. “But that third year with Trinity Funderburk as a senior, that was a really (special year). I just wish I had more season with that team and been able to see what more we could have done with the girls. It was such a great atmosphere”
Elmore decided to leave after that season.
“It was a really hard thing to walk away from at the time,” Elmore said. “I was just ready to step away and start a family. It was hard to do at that time. I left them in great hands with Maddie Odom.”
Elmore returned to Oak Ridge once again and worked with Sledge.
In late July 2022, Elmore gave birth to a son and within a couple weeks was encouraged to return to coaching. As a new mom, Elmore had doubts. But Sledge made her feel confident in herself that she could juggle.
“When you’re around Coach Sledge, she can make you feel like you can do anything in the world,” Elmore said. “There’s never a doubt because she pumps you up with so much positivity. When I started to explore it (a head coaching job) again, she said you could do anything that you want.”
Elmore couldn’t be more excited to come to Porter. She envisions a program filled with athletes that are contributing to more than just volleyball on campus.
“(I was) looking for something 5A where it’s just a little more common where you find kids who are multi-sport athletes,” Elmore said. “I was a five-sport athlete in high school. I just kind of wanted to step into a role where I had kids that just weren’t a volleyball player. They were an athlete that happened to play volleyball.”
She was also struck by how capable the Spartans are in taking a step forward as a program.
Last year, the Spartans were 13-25 and just squeezed into the playoffs with a fourth place finish in District 16-5A. It was Porter’s first season in Region II and it was swept by Hallsville in the first round.
“Before I took this job, I went on MaxPreps and did a lot of calculating,” Elmore said. “There was a lot of games – over 40 percent of their games were lost by five points or less. Just instilling that drive to finish all the way through and just to fight – if they want it, they have to fight for it as hard as the other team is fighting.”
The Spartans have reached the playoffs every season dating back to 2020. But the team was eliminated in the first round in all three trips and had a losing overall record in each season.
“I would really like to get a winning record season this year,” Elmore said. “They haven’t had a winning record the past five years. I would really like for them to strive for something like that as goal one. Goal two is to go past the first round. If we set goals, we can get there.”
This year’s team returns just three letterwinners from last year.
But there’s hope as Elmore’s first offseason program has gone well.
“We’ve had a great job with them coming to open gym and strength and conditioning camp this summer,” Elmore said. “The younger kids – I really think they are going to step up when it’s their time.”
