Men’s Volleyball Record-Setter Inducted into Hall of Fame

Aspiring to be a basketball player, Naseri Tumanuvao came to the U.S. from Western Samoa as a young boy and discovered volleyball, later helping Concordia’s men’s team to win the 2013 NAIA National Championship in its first season in existence. Tumanuvao was recently inducted into the CUI Athletics Hall of Fame.

“I have great memories of Concordia and loved my time there,” the 6-foot-4 alumnus says. “From the professors to the athletic department, all the support staff, everyone was really supportive of men’s volleyball. It was just an awesome experience.”

A student-athlete for two years at Concordia, Tumanuvao set high marks for the fledgling program he helped pioneer. He was a 2013 NAIA All-American and was named 2013 NAIA Player of the Year. He led the team in scoring during Concordia’s climb to victory in the championship game. During that historic season, Tumanuvao also posted the best hit percentage in the 2013 NAIA National Tournament. Today, he still ranks in the Top 10 overall in a whopping 25 different categories in the Concordia record books – including in aces, attacks, kills per set, and hit percentage. He holds school records for most kills in a single season (374) and most aces in a single game (6).

But before he was a monster on the court, he was a kid growing up in Western Samoa with the beach as his back yard.

“I have a lot of really vivid memories,” he says. “We lived in a small village outside the capital, Apia. We didn’t have indoor plumbing. Once a week, we would go down to the well for fresh water. It was just life, and it was great. I have a lot of really cool, fun memories of growing up there.”

With four brothers and a sister, and extended family nearby, he was surrounded by loved ones, but soon his parents decided to move to the U.S. seeking greater opportunities. They lived with relatives in Redondo Beach for a year.

“It was a bit of a transition, in a good way,” Tumanuvao says. “We didn’t speak English, and we weren’t at school that first year but just at home with my aunts and uncles and cousins. We watched a lot of TV. It’s a running joke that we learned to speak English watching Gilligan’s Island, Jeopardy, and Family Matters.”

He was introduced to volleyball as a freshman at Lakewood High in Long Beach. There, the volleyball coach noticed his height and recruited him to the team.

“[My cousin and I] went to try out and were hooked,” says Tumanuvao. It was super-fun. Our athleticism transferred really well from basketball to volleyball. We loved it and started playing at lunchtime on concrete courts.”

Soon, he was also playing before and after school, though he says his first year competing in the sport was more of a learning experience.

“I wasn’t great, and I didn’t really know how to play,” he says. “I played in the middle, the position where you can cause the least amount of damage to your team, but I liked the sport so much and I wanted to improve. After that, I looked for opportunities to play anywhere.”

Local beach volleyball and club teams accelerated his improvement and “fanned the flames of my volleyball passions,” he says. “I couldn’t stop playing.”

Trevor Johnson, former Concordia’s men’s volleyball coach and program founder, convinced him to join the school’s first team.

“I thought it was exciting to be part of the inaugural team at Concordia,” Tumanuvao says. “Trevor had a vision and a plan,and I trusted him. He was invested in me as a person. I investigated the academic programs, and they aligned with the athletic piece. It was a great group of guys and we were all really motivated.”

Much of the roster was former junior college athletes who had “a little bit of a chip on their shoulders for being underrated,” he says. “

We called ourselves the JC All-Stars,” Tumanuvao says. “We were super-motivated to do some special things that year.”

With few NAIA teams to play nearby, the Golden Eagles filled their schedule with D1 teams like CSU Long Beach, California Baptist University, CSU Northridge, and Stanford — which sharpened their play.

“We were pretty battle-tested when we came across an NAIA team,” Tumanuvao remembers. “That gave us a huge confidence.”

Best of all, “Trevor was focused on us as people, making sure we were training well and doing the right things, academically and building our faith,” he says. “He was more focused on culture, not on winning. Winning was a byproduct of culture.”

While ripping through a record-setting season, Tumanuvao hardly seemed to notice.

“I didn’t focus much on individual awards,” he says. “We had a really good team. We were deep in a lot of positions. I may have been the focal point offensively for some matches, but we had a really talented team. Anyone could have a stellar night.”

In a Cinderella-type year, the team ascended to the championship game and won handily. The next year they also made it to the final match but lost. Tumanuvao then graduated and returned as a graduate assistant coach for the team. Pursuing coaching as an occupation, he became an assistant coach at Cal State Fullerton on the women’s side while coaching two club teams. In 2019, he was hired at UC Irvine where he now serves as an occupation, he became an assistant coach at Cal State Fullerton on the women’s side while coaching two club teams. In 2019, he was hired at UC Irvine where he now serves as an assistant coach of the women’s program.

“Coaching has been super-fulfilling,” he says. “The coolest part is you go through four years of a recruiting class, then people come back for alumni events, and you see they’re doing great. You impact their lives in a really positive way, similar to how a lot of my coaches impacted my life. I want to be able to pass that on.”