COEUR d'ALENE - The appeal of being able to compete for a national championship was one reason former Eastern Washington University coach Miles Kydd was interested in the vacant head volleyball coaching job at North Idaho College.

The fact that several Cardinal teams are consistently in the national title hunt didn't hurt either.

"It's Division I, sure, and it's Eastern, but the fact of the matter is, the football team gets a chance to compete for a national championship, but let's be honest, not many other sports at Eastern Washington are going to be able to compete for a national championship," said Kydd, who was named Thursday to replace Kandice Gregorak, who resigned as NIC volleyball coach after two seasons to be near her husband, Ty, who is defensive coordinator for the Montana football team. Kandice was recently hired as assistant volleyball coach at Montana.

Kydd, 53, was a member of the Eastern Washington volleyball coaching staff for nine years, the last four-plus as head coach. He was 57-60 as head coach and in 2008, his first season as head coach, was named Big Sky Conference Coach of the Year after leading the Eagles to the Big Sky regular-season title.

He resigned four matches into the 2012 season, citing personal reasons.

“He’s a great teacher, had a great reputation, knows how to recruit this area, and just his knowledge of the game,” NIC athletic director Al Williams said.

Williams said there were about 35 applicants for the NIC job. Kydd was selected over three other finalists — Kara Kiefer, former Lakeland High star and current director of operations for the Washington State University volleyball program; Steve Whitaker, Idaho assistant volleyball coach, and Kelsey Stanley, current NIC assistant volleyball coach. Kydd said Stanley would stay on as assistant coach.

The Canadian-born Kydd also has years of coaching experience in Canada at the college and national team level.

NIC has been to nationals in volleyball six times, all since 2004, with a best finish of fourth in ’06. The Cardinals have been the nationals each of the last three seasons, and four of the last five.

Kydd will be NIC’s fifth coach in seven seasons.

Kydd, who officially takes over as coach on April 15, said he plans to hit the ground running as far as recruiting. He said eight players plan to return from last year’s team. A few recruits have expressed interest to Stanley about coming to NIC, but were waiting to commit depending on who the new coach was going to be.

“Ideally, we’d want to end the rallies early,” Kydd said of his coaching philosophy. “You can get good at defense, but you have to recruit offense. But the best teams are the teams that have the highest team hitting efficiency.”