Britta Ashman begins her first season as the assistant coach of the Northeastern women's volleyball team during 2017. A former NU volleyball student-athlete (2003) and student assistant coach (2004) under Ken Nichols, she returns to the Huskies with a wealth of coaching experience across eastern Massachusetts, where she has most recently held head coaching positions at Curry College and Anna Maria College.
Ashman rejoins Northeastern after spending the 2016-17 scholastic year at Anna Maria, where she wore a number of administrative hats within the athletic department, serving as senior woman administrator, SAAC (Student-Athlete Advisory Committee) advisor, and Title IX coordinator. As the head coach of the women's volleyball team, she led the AMCATS to a school record, 21 wins, appearances in the 2016 GNAC (Great Northeast Athletic Conference) and ECAC tournaments, and the program's first-ever playoff victory – a five-set win against Saint Joseph's (Maine) during the GNAC quarterfinals.
En route to building a winning culture at Anna Maria, Ashman oversaw all aspects of recruiting, coordinated and ran team practices, and conducted film review sessions to scout the team's upcoming opponents. Above all, she valued and monitored her student-athletes' academic progress, working closely with the department's academic advisors and professors to ensure that classroom responsibilities were being achieved.
From 2012 to 2016, Ashman was a member of the women's volleyball coaching staff at Curry, where she was promoted from assistant coach to head coach prior to the 2016 season. Among her main duties with the program, Ashman served as the Colonels' recruiting coordinator, a role in which she maintained communication with high school student-athletes, assisted with their application process, and organized official visits. She also managed the team's budget, arranged travel to road competitions, oversaw its volleyball and work-study staff, and supervised student-athlete schedules. During her four full seasons on the sideline at Curry, she helped the Colonels improve their win total from the previous year on two occasions: 2013 and 2015.
Besides her background in coaching volleyball, Ashman served as the softball head coach at Bunker Hill Community College. While there, she was in charge of recruiting, directing the Bulldogs' practices, organizing the team's travel itineraries, and managing logistics for both home and away games. Off the field, Ashman mentored student-athletes in the pursuit of their academic goals, communicating with professors to help maintain their strong academic standing.
As a student-athlete, Ashman (Stroman) played two seasons of Division I volleyball at George Washington before transferring to Northeastern prior to the 2003 season. During her rookie campaign with the Colonials, she was named to the 2001 Atlantic 10 All-Rookie Team as an outside hitter, having collected two conference Rookie of the Week honors earlier during the year. Upon transferring to Northeastern, she played her final collegiate season during 2003 under Nichols before forgoing her senior year to serve the team as the student assistant coach.
Ashman earned her bachelor's degree in English from Northeastern in 2005 and went on to study at Salem State, where in 2010 she received her master's degree in education with a license to teach grades five through 12. In parallel with her coaching career, she worked as an educator at UMass Boston and Winchester High School on her way to completing her second master's degree in sports management and administration at Southern New Hampshire in 2015.
