Florida
Wise was hired as the head coach of the Florida Gators volleyball team at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida in 1991. In the twenty seasons since then, her Gators teams won nineteen SEC regular season championships. She is one of only two coaches in conference history in any sport, men's or women's, to win as many as nineteen conference titles. From 1994 to 2004, the Gators did not lose a regular season SEC match—a feat unmatched by any school, ever.
In 2003, Wise's Florida team won 105 straight games during the course of the season, eclipsing the previous NCAA record by 36 games. This record has since been broken by Penn State who won 111 consecutive games. Since 1991, Florida has amassed 571 victories in matches—more than any other school in the nation.
Her expertise has led to numerous appointments on international coaching staffs. In the summer of 2004 Wise took her own team on a twelve-day, three-nation tour of Western Europe as the Gators faced several national and junior national teams. In May 2006, Wise guided the USA Volleyball A2 Team at the U.S. Open Championships as the volleyball community became one of the first groups to compete in a large-scale event in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.
Wise's Gators showed a commitment to playing an active role in community leadership and involvement. An annual tradition, each year members of the Gators volleyball team visit children at nearby UF Health Shands Hospital during the Thanksgiving holiday, while players also participate in the Goodwill Gators program. In 2003, Wise helped raise $7,500 for the Children's Miracle Network after more than 4,000 Gator fans packed the O'Connell Center for a match against South Carolina.
Wise picked up the number one recruiting class for the class of 2008, as she signed the Gatorade National Player of the Year and top recruit, Kelly Murphy, as well as five other recruits ranked in the top 50.
On February 6, 2025, Mary Wise announced her retirement from the University of Florida after 34 seasons.
