The562’s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2025-26 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl.
Years ago, Natalie Reagan was sitting at a diner with some fellow volleyball coaches. As their server came around with a fresh pot of coffee, he started with one of her male co-workers.
“Would you like a refill, boss?”
Then his eyes shifted to Reagan.
“How ‘bout you, sweetie?”
Natalie Reagan retells that story from inside Walter Pyramid, minutes after running a Long Beach State women’s volleyball practice. Reagan is in the middle of her second season as head coach of the Beach, and it feels as if that cup of coffee was a central piece of her origin story.
“I looked at him and I asked, ‘Why am I not boss?’”
A Farmer’s Daughter
Growing up in Santa Cruz wine country, a career in athletics was certainly not bestowed upon a young Natalie Reagan. In fact, she sees herself as the “black sheep” of the family for not following suit in the wine industry.
“I grew up a farmer’s daughter, so all of our chores were on the vineyard and the vines,” she recalled. “We were spraying, weeding, netting, whatever the wine needed.”
She did get to play a wide variety of sports growing up–everything from water polo to track and field, soccer, horseback riding, and more. When she brought home a flyer for a Pop Warner team, her dad wondered if she wanted to be a cheerleader. Not exactly.
Though she could never convince her parents to let her play football, she would eventually find volleyball in eighth grade, when a PE teacher noticed her height and encouraged her to try out.
“I really fell in love with it,” Reagan said. “It’s such a unique sport, with how concentrated the human interaction is within a small space. And I’ve always loved that team camaraderie of it, that it’s not something you can do by yourself. You need your teammates with you.”
A Natural Leader
Natalie’s love for volleyball and her ability on the court opened doors for her at the next level. She played Division 1 volleyball at Oregon State for Hall of Fame head coach Terry Liskevych, who she still considers a close mentor to this day.
When her playing career was cut short due to injury, Liskevych pulled her aside and asked if she’d had an interest in coaching. Other than earning a reputation for being “bossy” as a child, Reagan said she hadn’t really considered that option, but was open to giving it a shot.
“He kept me on the coaching staff for the rest of my college career, and that’s really when my coaching career started,” Reagan explained. “It’s been this incredible cultivation of understanding what this natural leadership energy was within me, and helping young women grow in such an exciting field. So I didn’t know that I always wanted to coach, but I figured it was worth pursuing, and here we are.”
After coaching at her alma mater, Reagan went on to a successful stint at Nebraska, where she worked with another Hall of Fame coach in John Cook. She also crossed paths with a number of influential coaches like Chris Tamas, Dani Busboom, and even a few Long Beach State volleyball alums in Tyler Hildebrand and Bre Mackie, who has been a particularly valuable confidant as a young female head coach at Ole Miss.
“I’m really thankful to have such an incredible network around me,” said Reagan. “We lean on each other a lot, and talk a lot about the female head coaching role. I think it is so special and important to have those people that you can call in those moments, because it’s a hard place to be. They always say leadership’s lonely at the top, and we’re able to lean on each other for support in those moments.”
Breaking The Stigma
According to data from the NCAA Demographics Database, 74 percent of the 6,846 Division 1 head coaches are men, despite the fact that just 53 percent of the student-athletes they coach are men.
Though it has lessened gradually over the years, there remains a societal stigma around women in leadership positions. Reagan said she had a few female coaches when she was younger, but never at the collegiate ranks.
What makes her situation particularly interesting, is that she’s surrounded by an all-male coaching staff. It’s a unique dynamic, but one that she hopes will become less noteworthy over time.
“It’s the reality of life, right? So to not think about it, I think you’d be sticking your head in the sand and just not understanding what’s actually happening,” Reagan said. “At the end of the day, that stigma, it’s just that. I try not to breathe life into it, but I’m human, so there’s always that feeling of, ‘Are we enough in this moment?’ But just trusting my experience has gotten me here, and I know that I know my stuff. So I’m able to lean on that and trust that in those tough moments.”
Her support staff is comprised of Associate Head Coach Naseri Tumanuvao, assistant coaches Michael Ma and Jordan Molina, and Statistical Coordinator Jon Parry. Those last two have been with Reagan for each of the past two seasons, and Molina says there’s a healthy dynamic for all coaches to communicate freely.
“We all have Nat’s back,” said Molina, a two-time national champion as a player for the Beach. “There’s no weird power dynamic, we’re all on the same page and we’re okay with giving each other feedback … I feel super comfortable going to her with anything, not just volleyball, but life in general. It’s a really unique relationship in that sense, like I know she’s my boss, but also at the end of the day, I know she really cares for all of us. Which is, for me at least, what’s most important for who I choose as my mentors or as my boss.”
Trust is an extremely important factor for Reagan in those staffing decisions, and she’s always been focused on putting the right people around her, regardless of gender.
“Having an all-male staff is unintentional in that sense,” she said. “I would love to hire a female, but it’s just the right people at the right time. And it’s really, really cool in the male-dominated industry to have incredibly supportive male assistants and not feel threatened or undermined at all. I know a lot of situations where that would be really easy for people, so I’m really, really thankful. I’m only as strong as my staff, and that’s been incredible.”
Exhausted All The Time
The 2025 season is particularly meaningful for Reagan. Not just because it’s her first year as permanent head coach, after getting her “interim” tag removed last November. It’s meaningful because she’s currently expecting her first child, and is actively coaching during the third trimester of her pregnancy.
It’s been a unique experience for both her and the team, as they get to share in the new experience together. She said her players ask questions all the time about her pregnancy journey, and it’s brought them closer as player and coach to have such meaningful “real life” conversations.
“I’m really thankful to be happy and healthy, and everyone’s in a good place, but honestly, I’m just exhausted all the time,” Reagan admitted. “Naseri will follow me around the whole practice with a chair, and he’s like, ‘Do you want to sit? Do you want to sit?’ And the girls are constantly checking on me if I need to rest or take a breath or whatever. So that’s been really nice. But, yeah, it’s quite the adventure, quite the roller coaster.”
Her due date isn’t until January, but preparations and precautions must be taken in advance. Should the Beach make a deep run in the postseason, she would be in a “no fly zone” during the most important point of the season. Reagan says she’ll give birth on a plane if she has to, and wouldn’t miss a chance to lead her team in the Sweet 16 if the opportunity arises.
Even before then, with an upcoming trip to Hawai’i on Nov. 22 for Long Beach State’s regular season finale, accommodations have already been made with her doctor.
“I have my strict instructions with that, and then I basically just need to know where the nearest hospital is,” Reagan explained. “My staff is prepped in case anything happens, but it really is just a day-by-day, feel-by-feel, and then trying to maintain that balance of stress, or rest, or food, and putting the team first. So it’s quite the balancing act.”
Rebuilding the Culture
After leading the Beach to a 19-11 record in her debut season, Reagan and her coaching staff have revamped a roster that lost its top eight players by sets played, welcoming 10 new faces into the program this offseason.
Now in 2025, the new-look Beach are 17-8 with four matches left in the regular season. They’re on track to be one of the top four seeds in the Big West Women’s Volleyball Tournament, which will be hosted in Long Beach during Thanksgiving week.
Reagan said she’s pleased with how the group has come together. Players have taken on different positions from last year, while others have changed mid-season, but the Beach have found a way to succeed during the turmoil. She attributes that to the culture of the program–not what was laid out for this group, but what the players have created themselves.
“At the end of the day, the culture is what they make it. They are the culture,” Reagan said. “It’s a living, breathing thing. It’s not this document that’s in a binder and then it’s solidified forever. They worked really, really hard this spring, this summer, and in double days to set that tone and set that standard, and having 10 new players as part of that can be a really exciting thing or a really challenging thing, because you are rebuilding the culture whether you like it or not.”
Reagan says she wants practices to be the most stressful part of the week for her team, so they can let loose and have things come easily for them on gamedays. And after creating those intense moments on the practice court, her practice sessions end with breathing exercises, relaxation and mindfulness.
After all, life is about balance. And Reagan has seen first hand how the stressors of athletic competition can prepare you for life’s challenges.
“The lessons that they learn here in the gym are preparing them for life. The lessons that we learn in this drill or in this pressure situation, it’s preparing you for that CEO job. It’s preparing you to be a good community member in the future. It’s preparing you to be a mom in the future. Whatever hardship is going to come in life. It’s preparing you for that moment.”
Sure thing, boss.
