Sports
Turnbull To Coach At NCAA College Basketball Academy Later This Month – Jamestown Post Journal
Jul 15, 2024
In this 2021 file photo, Jamestown Community College women’s basketball coach Dave Turnbull gives instructions during a timeout. P-J file photo by Scott Kindberg
Dave Turnbull has loved basketball for as long as he can remember.
“I was an only kid, and it was one of the only sports that allowed me to work on my game, have fun with it and not need anyone else to do it with me,” the Jamestown Community College women’s coach said the other day. “It appealed to me in that sense that I could do it on my own.”
From those early years, Turnbull’s passion for hoops only grew, expanding to working summer camps and rubbing elbows with some of the biggest coaching names in the sport, and ultimately, taking those valuable experiences to girls programs at Maple Grove and Southwestern high schools, and to Jamestown CC since 2021.
Along the way, his hoops odyssey allowed him to “pick the brains” of coaches like Dean Smith, Roy Williams, Bob Knight, Jim Boeheim, Jim Valvano, Sylvia Hatchell and Tara VanDerveer.
“I steal and copy from all of them,” Turnbull said. “They were very, very generous with their time.”
DAVE TURNBULL
Fast-forward several decades.
Now it’s Turnbull’s turn to give back.
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During the Jayhawks’ 2023-24 season, Turnbull received an email from the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association that included an application to become a staff member at the NCAA College Basketball Academy, which will be held July 27-29 at Rock Hill Sports & Events Center in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
“I filled it out and I forgot all about it,” Turnbull said. “I thought, ‘There’s no way a guy from JCC is going to be tapped to be there. No chance.’”
But a couple months ago, he learned that he was one of 60 WBCA-member coaches who were selected to work at the academy.
“I was dumbfounded,” Turnbull said. “I almost didn’t open the email.”
The basketball talent he’ll be working with will be “the best of the best” girls high school players from not only the United States, but also from Europe.
According to the NCAA College Basketball Academy website, the weekend “will pair high-level basketball competition with life skills instruction. In addition to basketball training, skill development, and games, participants and their parents or chaperones will attend life skills courses about NCAA eligibility and compliance; the recruiting process; name, image and likeness opportunities; agents; and the transfer portal.”
“They’ll have teams made up and they’ll be tweaked the first night so there’s pretty good parity,” Turnbull said. “Then, some of us will have a coach with us and some of us will be single coaches. I believe I’m one of the single coaches.”
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At 62, Turnbull figures he’ll be one of the oldest coaches in Rock Hill, but his enthusiasm for the opportunity remains at the highest level.
“I’m proud to have the opportunity,” he said. “I said to my wife that I’m probably going to be the oldest coach there, but to still be thought of well enough and high enough to go to something like this makes me feel really good.”
And it confirms that all the work Turnbull put in on his own when he was a kid continues to pay dividends decades later.
“At our age — to use a golf analogy — we’re certainly on the back nine of things,” he said, “so to still have opportunities crop up, I love to embrace them.”
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