Bio

Jeremy Thornburg enters his fourth season at Defiance College with 2026-27 being his second year coaching both the women's and men's programs. Thornburg has been at DC since January 2024.

Thornburg coached the Yellow Jackets to the WHAC Tournament during his first season in 2024. Defiance posted double-digit wins for the first time since 2019 and snapped a five-year postseason drought. In his second season in 2025, the DC women's team posted a 7th-place finish in the WHAC to get back into the postseason and recorded the program's most wins since 2019 with a 16-17 season. Under Thornburg, the Yellow Jackets have placed three players on the WHAC All-Conference Team, one on the All-Freshman Team, and earned 15 Academic All-Conference honors. In the spring of 2026, a new era of DC Volleyball emerged with the official introduction of the men's program, who won their first match before closing the year 6-20. 

Before coming to Defiance, he was a coach and Associate Club Director/Director of Programming and BSA Events for Team Pineapple Volleyball Club in Angola, Indiana. Thornburg also spent single seasons as an assistant coach at NAIA Goshen and Division-III Trine before joining Team Pineapple in March 2021. In addition to his coaching duties for various age groups at the club level, he was also in charge of camps, clinics, events, and programming for Team Pineapple.

Nearly half of Thornburg's coaching career took place as the men's volleyball head coach at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. He started with the program in 2014 and built a team that began competing in the spring of 2015. The team's win total jumped from three to 10 in the second season of competition and turned in the first winning season in year four, which featured a runner-up finish in the conference tournament. Loras, a D-III institution, finished with winning records in each of Thornburg's last three years highlighted by a 21-7 campaign in 2019. Thornburg compiled a 66-76 record over his six seasons with the Duhawks.

Thornburg is a 2012 graduate of Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne and was a student manager and assistant for the Mastodons men's volleyball program. He was part of IPFW's NCAA Tournament runs to the 2006 Final Four and runner-up finish in the 2007 national title match. From there, he spent single seasons assisting the women's programs at Division I Arkansas State and D-II Eckerd College in Florida before landing in Iowa for the next seven years.

Jeremy Thornburg Head Coaching Record
2015 (Loras, Men) - 3-20
2016 (Loras, Men) - 10-16
2017 (Loras, Men) - 9-15
2018 (Loras, Men) - 14-11
2019 (Loras, Men) - 21-7
2020 (Loras, Men) - 9-7
2024 (Defiance, Women) - 11-23, 5-13 WHAC
2025 (Defiance, Women) - 16-17, 9-11 WHAC
2026 (Defiance, Men) - 6-20, 3-15 WHAC
Overall Record: 99-136 (9 seasons)
Record at DC: 33-60 (3 seasons)
Record at Loras: 66-76 (6 seasons)