September 23, 2025

On Monday evening at a gala event and dinner held by the CIF-SS, Sondra Lough became King’s latest honoree in the CIF Southern Section’s Champions of Character program. 

Sondra Lough was born to coach volleyball. Over the span of 15 years, she has coached three programs (girls and boys volleyball-UCS Track) that became some of the most competitive the state of California. 

She served three seasons as co-head coach with Gene Krieger and was hugely instrumental in the Lady Wolves league championship in 2011 and in their magical 2012 run through the CIF and state playoffs.  That season, King won the CIF championship; the Southern California Regional championship and was state runner-; losing to perennial state power Archbishop Mitty High School out of San Jose in the finals. For those efforts,in 2012,  she was named Co-Big VII Coach of the Year; CIF Co-Coach of the year and the Riverside Press Enterprise Co-Coach of the Year for the 2012-2013 school year. 

In 2013 Lough took over the program on her own and over her 6 total years at the helm she produced 120 wins and made the CIF Playoffs 5 times including a CIF Quarterfinal berth and a CIF Semi-Final berth. Sondra also coached Boys Volleyball at King for 4 seasons, building the program from the ground up. She posted 37 wins and made the playoffs in her second season. She has a total of 214 varsity wins to her credit.  Prior to coming to King, she was the head volleyball coach at John W. North and was the freshman coach at Ramona High School.

“Both she and her student athletes showed sportsmanship, work ethic and positive behavior every time they toed the mark.,” said retired King Track Coach John Corona.  “She has been passionate about what was best for all student-athletes and for the sport of volleyball. Going against Sondra and her teams meant you had a tough hard-fought match on your hands. However, she would never sacrifice dignity, sportsmanship or fair play in pursuit of victory. I daresay, she would rather lose than sacrifice those virtues for a win. I have seen few coaches that could produce a team culture and belief system the way she did.”

Over the past five years, as a Special Ed. teacher, Coach Lough has been active in building and coaching the Unified Sports program at King High School. This program, designed to work toward the inclusion of students with intellectual abilities into the school community, has grown within Riverside and the Inland Empire due in large part to Sondra’s advocacy and hard work. In 2022, ML King High School won the first ever Unified Sports CIF Track Championship.

Lough attended Hueneme High School in Oxnard, Calif, where she was lettered varsity all four years. During her time with the Vikings, the girls’ volleyball team had 48 wins and 2 losses. She was named Team MVP; Channel league MVP and was an All-League-All-CIF performer. She went on to start four years at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, helping the Lady Broncos to the Big Sky Conference Championship in 1988. Her son Nick, (C/O 2013) and daughter Regan (C/O) 2016 are both King grads. Regan,  like her mom was All-CIF in Volleyball and went on to compete for Villanova University.