Turhan Douglas: Through the Highs and Lows
SMC Volleyball Head Coach Turhan Douglas calls a timeout to speak with his players as they trail Cuesta College. September 19, 2019. Santa Monica, Calif(Photo by Kevin Tidmore)
Turhan Douglas, head coach of the Santa Monica College Women’s Volleyball team, is a decorated champion who holds an impressive trophy cabinet that he has earned throughout his volleyball career, both as player and coach.
During his collegiate career, he won multiple titles including the state crown while playing for Pierce College in 1987 and made All-Conference first team the following year. Douglas then took his talents to Long Beach State University (LBSU) where he won a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) title, defeating the well-respected University of Southern California (USC) team in 1991.
Douglas also led Pierce College Men’s Volleyball team to two South Conference titles and was named Western State Conference Coach of the Year (1998-99) nearly a decade after his own accomplishments at Pierce; this time as their head coach.
Eventually, Douglas would land the job as USC’s Men’s Volleyball head coach in 2002 after being the assistant coach for the previous three years. He replaced two time Olympic gold medalist and former rival Pat Powers, who was on the USC team in 1991.
“The first day [as assistant coach] at USC I walked into the office and on my desk was a 1991 second place trophy. I said, ‘Hey coach I have the first place trophy at my house,’ he just laughed.” Douglas recalls.
Douglas would continue working as a head coach after leaving USC in 2006, including at West Baptist University and multiple clubs until finally arriving at SMC in 2016. He was announced as SMC’s Women’s Volleyball head coach in 2016 and won the WSC conference championship just two years later in 2018. This was his first time back at SMC since 1992 where he was an assistant for the Men’s volleyball team for 4 years.
This season, Coach Douglas and the Corsairs hope to move forward coming off last season’s disappointing result where the Corsairs fell to a 2-20 record overall and went 2-10 in their conference.
“We had eight [former teammates] that didn’t return for various reasons, which left us with an all-freshman team who took a lot of licks but I thought improved over the course of the season,” says Douglas when recounting the Corsairs 2019-2020 season.
However, with every new low comes a lesson and for Coach Douglas that is one of the greater takeaways from last season. “Sometimes as a coach you can take kids for granted…you know, we’d come off a championship season and you think everyone is going to be ready to go but you lose track of them during the off season and then life happens…as a coach you have to make sure that you are keeping everyone together and keeping them focused on what their goals are,” said Douglas.
It is obvious that there is a lot of work to do for Coach Douglas and his team.
Despite the COVID-19 shut downs back in March, Coach Douglas was able to successfully finish his recruiting right before college athletics were brought to a halt, bringing him a new group of talent to the squad.
Coach Douglas had plenty of confidence when he spoke about his team and new recruits. “I think it’s the best class the school has ever recruited…I’ve been coaching junior college so long and SMC over the years and I’ve never seen anything this good,” said Coach Douglas reassuringly.
You’ll find he’s not the only one who feels this way about the team either. His recruits also show a high level of trust in themselves and his coaching ability.
“You can see just how passionate he is about the program and about us and in a coach that’s so important” said Mackenzie Wolff, one of SMC’s latest star recruits. “The team we’re building is just so amazing and it's definitely going to be different from all the past years.”
