Tracy Dunnaway has completed the trifecta.

After coaching her Santa Fe Trail volleyball team to the Class 4A state championship this fall, Dunnaway now has won the big prize as a player, assistant coach and head coach. All three titles came at Santa Fe Trail, and thanks to the most recent one, she has been named the 2005 All-Area Volleyball Coach of the Year.

“It’s a real honor,” Dunnaway said. “To be recognized like that, its great. It’s a big honor for me.”

Dunnaway led the Chargers to a title in 1990 during her senior season and was on the bench as an assistant coach when Santa Fe Trail won it again in 1999. In just her fourth season at the helm, she guided her team to its latest state triumph.

And, boy, did she coach them.

The Chargers finished the season with 11 losses, an unusually high number for a state champion. They were the eighth-seeded team in the state-tournament field and already had lost to two of the other teams in the bracket.

The only two tournaments the Chargers won in 2005 were the sub-state and state tournaments. Odds-makers didn’t predict the chances of her team winning it all, but if they had, Santa Fe Trail no doubt would have been an underdog.

“There were times during the season where I had to force myself to coach them,” Dunnaway said. “There were times where I would just say, ‘Oh my gosh …,’ but I hung in there with them.

“Near the end of the season when we were approaching sub-state, it would have been easy for them to make excuses, but I wouldn’t let them. I was in their face, relentlessly, coaching them and pushing them.”

All of the hard work paid off with a stellar run through the postseason and another piece of volleyball hardware for the Santa Fe Trail trophy case.