Some local students have the privilege of competing for their high schools in sailing and surfing, water sports that could only be possible close to waterfront, beach or coastal environments.
These days, beach volleyball has become another popular niche sport, and no one is more qualified to coach than Dan Glenn.
Glenn, a member of the CIF Southern Section Hall of Fame, was a math, history and economics teacher for 37 years who retired in 2022. He has coached the Newport Harbor High boys and girls beach volleyball teams since before the COVID pandemic.
Beach volleyball became an official CIF Southern Section-sanctioned girls sport in 2022. Newport Harbor’s boys play in the 18-school Orange County Beach Volleyball League, which has been operating for more than a decade as a club league with playoffs, as well as innovative five-against-five, four-person matches and all the way down to singles.
“Boys beach volleyball is like surfing, in that it has its own league and playoffs (not governed by CIF), and I kind of like it that way. We create our own little (system), and I like that,” said Glenn, a generational coach who has coached many of his former players’ children, and is one of Orange County’s foremost volleyball coaches.
The Newport Harbor boys won a seventh beach volleyball league title in 11 years last fall. There were about 26 in the program.
The girls play in the spring and host matches and practice at Grant Street in West Newport. There are 28 girls in the program.
Prior to coaching beach volleyball, Glenn spent more than 35 years as an indoor volleyball coach, mostly at Newport Harbor.
Glenn has led the Newport Harbor girls to seven CIF Southern Section championships and five state titles while coaching seven CIF Southern Section Players of the Year and guiding the Tars to 17 league titles. The Sailors’ girls posted a record of 683-299 under Glenn.
Glenn, who coached at Edison and University before arriving at Newport Harbor in 1986, also coached the Newport Harbor boys indoor volleyball program to three CIF Southern Section titles and coached two CIF Southern Section Players of the Year. The Tars’ boys went 495-176 during Glenn’s tenure of more than two decades. At Edison, Glenn’s boys won two Sunset League titles.
Several of Glenn’s former players have gone on to become successful coaches, including former UC Berkeley women’s volleyball head coach Jennifer Carey Dorr and Eric Vallely, who coached the Sailors’ boys indoor team to the CIF Division 1 championship in 2022.
Another triumphant Glenn protégé, Jenny Evans Griffith, is the women’s beach volleyball coach at Concordia University in Irvine, which has become an NCAA Division II powerhouse.
Evans, a National High School Player of the Year at Newport Harbor in 1987, an NCAA champion at UCLA and a standout on the Association of Volleyball Professionals Tour, was a junior at the beginning of Glenn’s reign at Newport Harbor in 1986.
“Danny Glenn was a breath of fresh air,” she said. “He came in and was very positive and you could tell he really liked teaching us, and he started teaching us different ways of playing volleyball. High school was a lot of fun. We had a good time.”
Jeannette Hecker Bakke, a setter on two state championship teams at Newport Harbor under Glenn (1992 and ’94) before a decorated career at Loyola Marymount and the AVP Tour, still sees Glenn in the close-knit volleyball community. Hecker Bakke, who coached at Mater Dei, has been a nurse for 17 years and is preparing for her doctorate in nursing at Long Beach State.
“Let me tell you something about Coach Glenn,” she said last week. “You see him and he still makes you feel like you’re the most important thing to him, even though he has coached thousands of girls. He still makes you feel like you’re his favorite.”
Richard Dunn, a longtime sportswriter, writes the Dunn Deal column regularly for The Orange County Register’s weekly, The Coastal Current North.