When K.C. Gan looks back on his long career playing volleyball, he laughs and calls the fact that he was on the Malaysian National Team at 18 years old “scary.”
At 61, he works full time as a manager of capital equipment and service contracts for the Kettering Health Network. But five days a week, 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. from August to the first week of November, he coaches the Sinclair women’s volleyball team.
That’s not counting games on Saturdays and recruiting in the off season. It all adds up: in 2011, the team had an Ohio Community College Athletics Conference (OCCAC) record of 8-4 and an overall record of 18-17.
He himself had to retire from playing due to an ankle and knee problem; but up until 2005, he played in the USA Senior Olympic tournament and USA Adult Volleyball tournament.
“Coaching was always in my blood,” he says, “but there wasn’t always time for it.”
When Gan moved to America in 1981, he had been thinking about the greater opportunity for schooling, not volleyball. It was only when his daughter Ashley became interested in playing that he started to coach again.
At first he coached the Gem City Junior Olympics clubs (currently the Dayton Jr. Club), but when the job opened up at Sinclair, he took it. Now he’s coached women’s volleyball at Sinclair for 14 years.
The Sinclair Athletic Department has a policy of “Three Cs” which Gan said stands for classroom, community service and competition. The policy coincides with the one he has always had, which is that studies come first and that “volleyball comes last.”
You might not suspect it if you looked at his record. He’s been playing volleyball since 1965 and played for the Malaysian National Team for nine years. He played at the Southeast Asian games, the USA Open Tournament and USA Master Tournament. He won Coach of the Year twice in the OCCAC, and some of his players are among the top ranked in Division II of the National Junior College Athletic Association.
But Gan is more concerned with his players being good people.
“With coaching, I’m trying to give talent back to the community,” Gan says. He calls his current batch of players “good,” meaning good people and not just good players.