Photo courtesy of Greg Devereaux Photography SMSU volleyball coach Terry Culhane watches a play during a home match. Culhane announced on Monday that he will be retiring as the head coach after 18 seasons and as an assistant professor in the Education Department at the end of the fall semester this year.
MARSHALL — If you have some familiarity of female athletics in southwest Minnesota, especially in volleyball and girls basketball, there’s a high probability you’ve heard Terry Culhane’s name be mentioned in conversation about the sport. An iconic coach across the prep and collegiate level, Culhane’s impact has been seen all throughout the state with decades of success.
On Monday afternoon, Culhane announced he will be retiring from his positions as head volleyball coach and assistant professor in the Education Department at Southwest Minnesota State University at the conclusion of the 2021 fall semester.
“I would like to thank everyone in Mustang Athletics as I have truly enjoyed all of my time here at SMSU,” Culhane said in a press release. “It has been an honor to get to coach and teach all of our student-athletes past and present.”
Culhane added he started thinking about retiring last year but feels now is just the right time.
“I started talking about it last year, but wasn’t quite sure, and then things kept going along. This isn’t something you just decide, ‘OK, this is the day I’ll do it.’, but I think it’s just the right time,” Culhane said. “It’s going to be hard to leave our kids, but I can still volunteer and help in certain things. I also didn’t want to mess up our season, so I waited until late in the year to tell the team.”
“On behalf of Mustang Athletics, I would like to thank Terry for his many years of dedication to our Athletic Department, the Mustang volleyball program, coaching staff, and student-athletes,” said SMSU Interim Director of Athletics Bruce Saugstad in the release. “Terry has made an impact on and off the court within the lives of our coaches and student-athletes. Our teams have been consistently ranked nationally under his leadership creating a great environment for our student-athletes to compete in a sport they love.”
“I know I speak for the entire Mustang family in wishing Terry the best in his retirement,” SMSU President Dr. Kumara Jayasuriya added. “His record speaks for itself, and he’s elevated our volleyball program to national prominence. His student-athletes are leaders on the court and in the classroom, and he has represented SMSU at the highest level. We are grateful for all he’s done for SMSU athletics.”
Starting at home
Growing up in Marshall, Culhane would attend SMSU, where he spent time with the baseball and basketball programs. After graduating from SMSU in 1978 with a degree in elementary education, physical education and health, Culhane got his coaching career started with the girls volleyball team at Milroy High School in 1979 where he led the Scrappers to sixth-place (1983) and fifth-place (1984) finishes at the state tournament. A couple of years later, he became the head volleyball coach at Tracy-Milroy High School, guiding the Panthers to 10 state tournament appearances, including five state championships (1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996). He also led T-M to three state tournament appearances in girls basketball.
In 1997, Culhane took over as the head girls basketball coach at Marshall High School and led MHS to three state tournament trips, winning back-to-back championships in 2001 and 2002. He also led Marshall to three state tournament appearances in four years in volleyball, including a runner-up finish in 2002 and was named the 2002 Minnesota Class AAA Coach of the Year.
Leveling up
On Jan. 22, 2004, Culhane was named the fourth head coach in program history at SMSU. Culhane said he was interested in transitioning from the high school to the collegiate level and eventually brought Paul Soupir on as an assistant coach and together they started working on their approach to improving the program.
“Initially I was curious about what it would end up being like; Paul and I coached together at the high school level and I talked him into coming with me at SMSU and then Tyler [Boddy] and other coaches have come in and we started working on how we would get the program better,” Culhane said. “We were also fortunate to have a lot of good players and coaches during that stretch.”
Culhane and the Mustangs immediately saw success on the hardwood, posting 22 victories in his first season at the helm before improving that number to 26 wins, with SMSU winning its first-ever NCAA tournament match. That would be the start of an incredible run of 15 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, with the Mustangs winning at least 23 matches each season, including two seasons with 27 wins (2006: 27-9 and 2010: 27-4) and 28 wins (2008 and 2016: 28-6), one season with 29 victories (2017: 29-4) and one season with 30 victories (2012: 30-3).
In 2014, the Mustangs had one of their more memorable runs in team history, winning 20 matches in the regular season before winning the NCAA Central Region Championship for the first time in program history, including stunning Concordia-St. Paul in the semifinals and snapping its 43-match win streak in the postseason. From there, SMSU defeated Sonoma State (Calif.) 3-2 and Grand Valley State (Mich.) 3-0 to advance to the NCAA national championship match before falling short to the University of Tampa 3-0.
Culhane said when one of their players, Greta Geist, got sick while battling cancer, they rallied around her and strengthened their bond as a team and it helped them put together an incredible run.
“It was a unique season. There was a player [Greta] with cancer in high school that we recruited to play and then during the year, the cancer came back and Greta got sick again and we just pulled together and kept getting better,” Culhane said. “In the regional, we played Nebraska-Kearney the No. 3 seed, Concordia the No. 2 seed and Minnesota Duluth who was unbeaten and we won the regional. In the final 8, we kept plugging away and won our first two games before we got beat by a much more mature Tampa team, they had very experienced players. We had a very young group but we just stayed together in the process and believed in each other. It was pretty cool.”
The following year, Culhane became the program’s all-time leader in victories and currently has a record of 429-123, including a 256-66 mark in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. This season, Culhane entered as the 14th-winningest coach in Division II history in winning percentage and his 429 wins are in the Top 25 for active D-II head coaches. Culhane is also a four-time NSIC Coach of the Year honoree, with the Mustangs winning two NSIC regular season and tournament championships and have been ranked in the AVCA Top 25 poll for every week since Sept. 5, 2006 except one.
During his tenure, Culhane has also coached 27 AVCA All-Americans, 24 AVCA first team All-Region players, five Region Freshmen of the Year, six NSIC Freshman/Newcomers of the Year, five NSIC Players of the Year, 43 All-NSIC first team members, four CoSIDA Academic All-Americans and an AVCA Freshman of the Year. Outside hitter Taylor Reiss was named the AVCA National Player of the Year in back-to-back seasons in 2017 and 2018 as well as the 2018-19 NCAA Division II Honda Female Athlete of the Year.
Culhane said he wanted to challenge and help his players continue to improve and felt they’ve done a great job of buying into their message as a program and worked hard every day.
“I always try to get the most out of players and I wasn’t afraid of challenging our best players,” Culhane said. “Paul, Tyler and I went about it this way and it turned out to be a good thing; the kids bought in and worked hard and weren’t afraid of the hard work. It’s something we’ve enjoyed and we enjoyed being with our players.”
A new chapter
The Mustangs will wrap up their regular season this weekend with two home matches against the University of Minnesota Crookston and Bemidji State University. As for the next phase of his life after the season is over, Culhane said he’s not exactly sure what will happen but knows he is willing to lend a helping hand when needed.
“I’m not totally sure what will happen but I enjoy coaching volleyball and at some point I’ll probably volunteer and help because you can never have enough coaches. I’ll first see what it is like not coaching and then see what happens from there,” Culhane said. “I loved working with the teams we had at SMSU and how we worked together to make the program better. I can’t coach forever, so it seemed like the right thing to do. It will also be a chance for me to spend more time with my wife, both of us will be in retirement and hopefully get to explore some other things.”
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