By Doug Carroll

There are plenty of clues in the office of Regina Mannix that its occupant is a highly successful volleyball coach.

Individual and team awards cover the walls. A photo of Scottsdale Community College's 2019 national champions is displayed prominently. The collection resembles what you might find in a hall of fame, which is appropriate because Mannix is in a couple of those — most notably the one for the National Junior College Athletic Association, to which she was elected 14 years ago.

She has been the head coach of SCC volleyball for more than twice that long, 29 years, with hundreds of wins to her credit. Her nationally ranked team has been mowing down its competition while absorbing life lessons from a master teacher of them. 

The wins are important, the lessons much more so. Yet the approach is simple, straightforward and consistent.

"We call it being durable — mentally, emotionally and physically," Mannix says. "You have to train that way all the time, with all aspects locked in.

"We're helping them see that it's a life skill."

Durability is a theme in Mannix's own remarkable story. She preaches what she has practiced. In athletic terms, she has done the reps.

The coach grew up in southern California as Regina Stahl, the first to go to college from a family of grocers. She raced BMX bikes competitively and played softball until a legendary coach at Gahr High School in Cerritos saw volleyball potential in her. She blossomed quickly as a setter for a powerhouse team that sent seven players, including her, to NCAA Division I volleyball programs. 

At Arizona State, she remains the career leader in service aces and assists 35 years after playing for the Sun Devils. She was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease that can be difficult to manage, before her junior year.

She recalls having a heart-to-heart talk with her doctor.

"If I play, will I die? If I don't play, will I live?" she asked as she made her case to play. "Volleyball isn't what I do, it's who I am. I don't want a life without it."

Mannix kept playing, battling other health issues as well. After a post-ASU stint in pro beach volleyball, she was working a job in undercover loss prevention and thinking about becoming a juvenile probation officer when a friend told her SCC was looking for an assistant coach.

She took the coaching job and the pay cut that came with it, figuring she would move on to something else after a year or two of extending her volleyball life. When the head coaching position opened, she was persuaded to apply — and hired.

The gym as classroom

Although she has had opportunities to coach elsewhere, she says she stayed because she wanted the chance to build a successful culture at SCC for the long haul.

"I knew I could teach volleyball," Mannix says. "When you see the light go on with (players) and then they look at you, it's like watching a baby take its first steps. The joy for me is in the practices, not the games.

"I love Kobe Bryant's quote about competing against yourself every day. If you do that, you'll be fulfilled. The trick is to stay mentally engaged. You have to be in the moment."

A certain type of high school player fits her recruiting profile, she acknowledges, and it's not all about athletic ability. Other factors often matter more to her.

"I like players with a lot of growth potential," she says, "and I like teaching to that. It's less exciting when it's just about managing great players. Every good program has to think of its complete roster. There are roles to play on a team."

Growth potential can apply to coaches, too. Mannix went back to school to earn a master's degree in counseling, simply because she wanted to improve communication with her student-athletes. She wanted to learn about how information is successfully transmitted and received, particularly in the high-stress situations common to athletics.

She says her coaches in high school and college modeled extraordinary teaching skills, adding that she lived "a fairytale" by learning from some of her sport's best and brightest. Those coaches included Brian Gimmillaro in high school and Debbie Brown at ASU.

In making his pitch to get her to try volleyball, Gimmillaro told her, "You're wired like a leader and I can teach you." He would go on to a 32-year coaching career at Long Beach State, where he won three NCAA championships, coached Olympian Misty May-Treanor and helped engineer the faster, more athletic version of volleyball that is played today.

"My first day in volleyball, I learned from one of the best, and I never had to unlearn anything," Mannix says of Gimmillaro.

Now she is the one spotting high-character talent. 

"With one of our incoming freshmen," she says, "I told her that what attracted me first was her presence and confidence. She is magnetic. I told her I wanted her on our team no matter what."

Insisting on excellence

The built-to-last culture Mannix envisioned is firmly in place. She runs into former players everywhere, at road games and the supermarket, often clad in their old gray SCC practice shirts. She says she still hears from members of her first recruiting class.

A former assistant coach, Shari Kay, competes against her as the 21-year head coach at Eastern Arizona College. Kay, too, is in the NJCAA Hall of Fame.

Mannix's coaching tree is "more like an orchard," says Julia Larish, who was an All-American for Mannix, went on to play at the University of Texas at San Antonio and has been an SCC assistant since 2008.

A key component of the culture, Larish says, is a relentless emphasis on excellence.

Mannix "pays attention to the details," she says. "How you do anything is how you do everything. She holds everyone accountable, all the time. She sets a high standard and our teams live up to it."

For many of the players, SCC becomes home and they hate to move on.

"Being a Fighting Artichoke is a big deal to them," Mannix says. "It's a family. Once an Artichoke, always an Artichoke. The thing I hear most often (from former players) is, 'I wish this were a four-year school and I could have gone two more years.'"

Asked about the value of athletics to a community college, she has a big-picture view.

"In athletics, there is a tether that holds you when it's rocky and a wind is blowing," she says. "We reach a lot of students who would not otherwise end up at four-year schools and earn a degree.

"When the first one in a family goes to college, a pathway is created for the next one to go. It's a possibility that wasn't there before."