Katasha Turner has had a busy first two weeks on the job as Concordia College Alabama’s new volleyball and softball head coach.

A lot of her time has been spent on refining her team’s volleyball schedule, but she’s also been busy with administrative work and creating a budget for the upcoming athletics year.

At the end of the week, she’ll finally get a chance to dive into volleyball when her players report Saturday and meet her for the first time. Turner said she’s anxious, but ready to get started.

“My standards are high and I don’t want to lower the standard,” Turner said. “I’m ready to see what these young ladies can do.”

Turner said the Hornets’ volleyball team will have four freshman, a couple of transfers and around 10 returning players. The newcomers  won’t be the only ones getting their feet wet at the college level.

Turner has years of coaching experience at the high school level — including leading Clarke County to the 4A state championship game in 2012 — but this is her first collegiate job.

“This is a goal that I’ve always had in my life to get to the college level,” Turner said. “I’ve coached at every level and I’ve coached with college coaches during summer camps. It’s always been a goal of mine to do that, so when this opportunity presented itself, I had to come check it out.”

Turner takes over for Brandon Reeves as the team’s new volleyball coach. Reeves, who led Concordia to back to back appearances in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association’s national championship tournament, was named the new volleyball head coach at Chicago State University last week.

After back to back banner years, Turner said her goal is to keep the program moving in the right direction.

“I want to continue to progress and we already have some foundation, so we just have to build off that foundation that has been laid,” Turner said.

Turner said she expects the speed of the game to be faster at the college level, but there is another major difference she hasn’t faced. When coaching high school athletes, many of the players grow up in the same neighborhood and already have strong bonds.

In college, many of the players are meeting each other for the first time and have grown up in completely different areas. This year she will have players from California, Tennessee and Louisiana.

“From what I’m seeing, [the most challenging part] may be joining together players that have never played [together] before and meshing behaviors and meshing attitudes …  and different backgrounds together to create a cohesive team,” she said.

“Sometimes that can be difficult because everybody doesn’t live the same lifestyle. I think that’s the biggest thing when you come to college is you have different walks of life on the court.”

One thing that won’t be different from the high school level is Turner’s coaching style. She said she’s always been a defensive minded coach and plans to keep that playing style with the Hornets.

With the season on the horizon, Turner’s focus has to be on volleyball right now, but she will also be the assistant women’s basketball coach and the school’s head softball coach.