Coach Karen (Olsen) Arsensault
Graduating class: 1988
Inducted into Hall of Fame: 2025
Hall of Fame Category: Coach
Influential, empathic, motivating, supportive, intense, dedicated and highly competitive are just some of the words used to describe Karen Arsenault as she coached her Fairhaven High School’s girls’ volleyball teams for 18 seasons.
In her career, Karen was very successful, holding a record of 280-88, and leading Fairhaven to 15-straight postseason appearances. From 2010 – 2013, Fairhaven won four straight sectional titles, and her teams have been the Southcoast conference champs three times. They also reached the state championship match twice in both 2010 and 2013 and the state semi-finals twice in 2011 and 2012.
Karen started her coaching career at FHS in 1993. She started as the junior varsity coach and took over as the head coach in 2001. She stepped down from coaching in 2018 and in her 17 seasons she coached over 400 girls. Some of these girls had never picked up a volleyball, but they became interested due to Karen’s involvement in the sport, and many felt motivated by Karen’s own love of the game.
In 2013 Karen was named the Standard Times Fairhaven Woman of the Year for her passion and dedication to the town’s youth. She was said to be nominated by several community members and several Standard Times staff.
Karen’s assistant coach for 17 seasons, Lisa Carvalho, was quoted as saying, “Not only did the players learn from her, but I learned from her too. She’s an all-around amazing person: a great coach, a great friend and a great mother. She always worked so hard for everyone else, that they wanted to work hard for her too”.
Karen grew up in Fairhaven and played for the Blue Devils when she was in high school from 1985-1988. In 1995, she was hired as a science teacher at Hastings Middle School and remained in that position until her retirement in 2019. Karen and her husband Dennis currently live in Mattapoisett, and they have two sons, Rudy (20) who is heading into his junior year at WPI and Alec (18) who just graduated from Old Colony and will be headed into the work- force as a machinist. Karen still currently plays beach volleyball once a week with former players and other area coaches during the winter months, and she does CrossFit daily in Dartmouth.
Karen has the distinction of being the first person to be inducted into the Fairhaven High School Hall of Fame as both an athlete and as a coach.