Photo courtesy of Jamestown CC Athletics David Turnbull, left, is pictured with George Sisson, Jamestown CC director of athletics, after being named women’s basketball head coach Wednesday.

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. — Jamestown Community College director of athletics George Sisson said that he had a “very formidable” group of candidates to consider in his effort to fill the Jayhawks’ women’s head basketball coaching vacancy.

Sisson believes he’s found the right man in David Turnbull.

The former girls coach at Maple Grove and Southwestern high schools was formally introduced Wednesday, replacing Ken Ricker, who resigned earlier this month after one season.

“We feel very happy and excited about having Dave take over this program,” Sisson said. “He comes here with a measure of success at the high school level. In our conversations, I’ve shared with him that college is different than high school. I think he’s more than excited and ready to take on those challenges head on.”

Turnbull arrives at Jamestown CC after leading Southwestern for four seasons, beginning in 2016-17. During that time he posted a 71-24 record, claimed two Section VI Class B-2 titles and was named the 2019 Post-Journal Coach of the Year. Before that, he spent two seasons at Maple Grove where he took his team to one Section VI Class D championship game and recorded a 24-15 overall mark.

“I’m going to take off running, just like in high school when I coached there,” Turnbull said. “No one is going to outwork me, whether it’s recruiting, X’s and O’s, fundraising or community service.”

As is the case with any collegiate athletic program, the ability to recruit will be the top priority, which Turnbull says he embraces.

“I’m excited about the recruiting part of it,” he said, “because it will be nice to get some players that will fit some of the things I like to do philosophically. … I can’t wait.”

Sisson said the program has signed “five or six” area players for the 2021-22 season, while Hannah Hicks, Jessica Beehler and Kymi Nance are expected to return from last year’s team, which finished 3-8 in an abbreviated season due to COVID-19.

“I don’t envision me full-court pressing to the extent I did at the high school level,” Turnbull said. “I do like to put pressure on the ball, so I will have a press that we’ll go to and work in.

“I think defense travels, and I think it will travel even more at the college level than at the high school level. That’s going to be the bedrock upon which I will build the program. I’ve always got our kids to buy into that mentality. I don’t think that will be an issue. I think they’ll want to get after it.”

Prior to his high school coaching career. Turnbull spent summers as a camp instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was there that he worked with former Tar Heels women’s coach Sylvia Hatchell, who is the sixth-winningest women’s coach in NCAA history.

Turnbull said he received a text from Hatchell earlier this week, noting that she would be calling him Sunday, “because she says she has all kinds of nuggets she wants to give me.”

Hatchell is just one of several prominent women’s collegiate coaches that Turnbull has fostered friendships with through the years. Among the others are Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer and UConn’s Geno Auriemma.

“Four years ago, I went to UConn for a week, sat with Coach Auriemma and watched all their practices,” Turnbull said. “He let me look at film. You learn from the master, quite frankly, or at least one of them. I’ve learned a lot of different things from Tara, (too).

“Always in the back of my mind, I wanted to coach in college, and I was always trying to prepare myself if the opportunity came. It worked out in this case.”

Turnbull does have some prior college coaching experience, serving two seasons as an assistant men’s basketball coach at Nazareth College.

“I love his intensity and I love his passion,” Sisson said. “He has a track record that is successful and I think he’s a great addition to the Jayhawk athletic family.”

A Jamestown native, Turnbull completed his juris doctor degree at the Syracuse University College of Law in the fall of 1989. Prior to Syracuse, he received his bachelor of arts in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his associate of arts in political science at Jamestown CC.