By Chace Bryson
Chris Stanley knew what the Northern California Volleyball Association was getting when it hired Donna Donaghy as its commissioner back in October of 1994.
Stanley, the long-respected college volleyball coach who held tenures at Cal and UOP, had hired Donaghy to help him at his youth tournaments in the mid- to late-80s. He’d also held the job of NCVA Commissioner, and he knew Donaghy would excel.
“She’s an incredibly hard worker,” Stanley said in a phone interview from his home in Oregon. “She’s intensely detailed. … She’d get to work an hour early and leave an hour late.”
When Donaghy took over, the NCVA’s business operations were still being run out of a residence. The Far Western Nationals Girls Qualifying tournament — a tournament founded by Stanley — was held at Stanford and featured approximately 100 teams.
Twenty-five years later, the NCVA is a thriving business with an executive staff of more than 10 people. The Far Western Nationals tournament is now held in Reno and welcomes more than 1,250 teams over two weekends. And the NCVA recently jumped from USA Volleyball’s fifth-largest region to its third-largest.
Donaghy still oversee it all as the region’s Chief Executive Officer.
“She has molded everything that NCVA is,” NCVA Director of Business Development Evan Orlando said.
Donaghy shepherded the region to an office, developed and facilitated some of the state’s best-run tournaments, and established the NCVA as a regional model that USA Volleyball touted to other portions of the country.
Judy Praska was interning for USA Volleyball when she first met Donaghy in 1998. Not long after, she became Executive Director for the North Country region representing Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Upper Michigan.
“(Donna) took me under her wing at the national tournaments. Taught me the ropes,” Praska said in a phone call from Minnesota where she now operates a drug testing business after 18 years of running North Country. “When I became director, any time I had a question I knew I could just pick up the phone and call Donna.”
Perhaps Donaghy’s most lasting legacy will be the vast amount of opportunity she created for the expansion of youth volleyball for both girls and boys of Northern California.
“These exceptionally run tournaments created space for volleyball to grow throughout the area,” Stanley said.
Donaghy, whose husband Tom works as the Chief Operations Officer at NCVA, is also in her final year of a four-year team on the USA Volleyball Board of Directors. She’s been the recipient of several distinguished service awards, including the Neville A. “Doc” Booth Commissioner’s Award this past May.
“She built everything,” Stanley concluded. “She deserves all of this success.”
photo credit: NCVA
