Julie Bennett joined the Waves in March 2017 as an assistant coach for the 2017 season and is in her second season with the team in 2018. Bennett was recently inducted into the Pepperdine University Department of Athletics’ 2016 Hall of Fame.
Most recently, Bennett has been a Director of Volleyball for the Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif. since 2015 where she planned, oversaw and coached programming throughout the year. Prior to that, she worked as an ACSM certified personal trainer since 2013, working with clients to help them achieve fitness goals. During the same time and since 2006, Bennet coached at Pacifica Christian High School in Santa Monica, Calif, at Sports Shack Volleyball Club in Westwood, Calif., gave private lessons and helped the Waves with Pepperdine Volleyball summer camps in Malibu. At Pacifica Christian, she led her team to a 2013 CIF-SS D4a Championships and earned Coach of the Year status.
Bennett, formerly Rubenstein, was a standout on the Pepperdine women’s volleyball team for a four-year period, never missing a set and playing in all 423 of them during her time as a Wave. She remains one of the top players in program history to this day. She was named to the AVCA All-American third team as a senior and earned All-WCC honors in each of her four seasons, including the last three on the first team. She was also picked to the AVCA All-Pacific Region first team as a senior in 2008.
At the conclusion of her career, she ranked third all-time in kills at Pepperdine with 1,743, and was also third in points (2,064), fifth in kills per set (4.12) and fifth in service aces (116). She led the Waves in kills all four seasons.
Her senior year included a spot on Collegiate Volleyball Update’s “Stellar Spikers” first team, a list of the nation’s top 14 players. She led the WCC in both kills (4.42) and points (5.14). She earned tournament MVP honors at all four non-conference events, was WCC Player of the Week twice, WCC Player of the Month once and a CVU.com National Player of the Week. She recorded double-figure kills in 26 of 28 matches, including a career-high 31 at Oregon State.
Bennett helped lead the Waves to the NCAA Tournament all four seasons (including reaching the Sweet 16 in 2005) and to a 73-43 overall record (.629).
Her off-the-court accolades were also plentiful. She won the West Coast Conference’s Michael Gilleran Award as the league’s top female student-athlete in 2008-09. She was one of 10 Division I finalists for the 2009 NCAA Woman of the Year Award.
She was a three-time WCC All-Academic selection and was twice a CoSIDA Academic All-District honoree before graduating with a degree in liberal arts in 2009. She received Pepperdine’s Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year award for 2007-08.
Bennett became the first person from Pepperdine to earn a spot on the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and she served as the WCC’s SAAC chairperson and as a co-chair for Pepperdine’s SAAC.
Her volleyball career included time at various levels in the U.S. National Team system, including the A2 team in 2007, a USA Select team in 2008 and a senior-level national team in 2009. She played professionally in Azerbaijan and Puerto Rico between 2010 and 2013.
