The 2025-26 season marks Michelle’s 22nd season at the helm for the Gryphons. As a coach with the Guelph Gryphons field hockey team, Michelle Turley is a three-time OUA Coach of the Year (2024, 2015 & 2004) and also a two-time recipient of the Marina Van der Merwe Award as U SPORTS Coach of the Year (2024 & 2004). With Turley at the helm of the field hockey program, the Gryphons have claimed five OUA titles (2007, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2019) while also racking up seven medals at the national level (2 silver, 5 bronze). When she took over the Gryphons field hockey program in 2004, the team was hovering around the .500 mark. In her 21 seasons in charge, the Gryphons have boasted a league record of 185-32-28 while producing 56 OUA All-Stars and 37 U SPORTS All-Canadians. Under Turley's guidance, a Gryphon field hockey player has been named U SPORTS Player of the Year on six different occasions. And perhaps most importantly, 101 of her Gryphon field hockey players have been named U SPORTS Academic All-Canadians.
Michelle Turley's coaching impact within the field hockey world also extends far beyond her involvement at the collegiate level, with the St. Thomas native having held multiple coaching positions at both the provincial and national levels.
In 2005, Turley served as an assistant coach with the Team Canada squad that took home gold at the Indoor Pan American Cup (hosted at RIM Park in Waterloo), with Canada winning 2-1 over the United States in the gold medal game. Each summer, Field Hockey Canada, in partnership with local provincial organizations, hosts U15, U18 and U23 national championships. On three separate occasions, Michelle Turley has served as the head coach of national championship-winning Team Ontario squads. Twice, she has led Team Ontario to national titles at the U18 level (2010 & 2011) while also leading Team Ontario's U16 squad to national gold in 2015. At the club level, Turley has made a huge impact locally, founding the Guelph Cobras franchise in 2007. In the 15 years since the Guelph Cobras field hockey club was created, a total of 65 of Turley's players have moved on from the Cobras to play collegiately, within either U SPORTS or the NCAA.
As a student-athlete at U of G from 1982-to-1987, Michelle Turley spent five years representing the Gryphons in both field hockey and ice hockey. During her five-year Gryphon field hockey career, Turley was a four-time team captain and 3-time OUA All-Star who would go on to score 99 career goals, a mark that still stands to this day as a school record. During the 1985 season, Turley's fourth year at U of G, the Gryphons would capture an OUA bronze medal, marking the team's first podium finish at the OUA level in program history. To this day, Turley is just one of seven Gryphon female athletes ever to be named U of G's Female Athlete of the Year on more than one occasion. Other major U of G awards on Turley's decorated list of accomplishments include the Dr. Mary Beverley-Burton Award in 1982 (as the top female rookie at U of G from across all women's sports) as well as being named the recipient of the 1987 W.F. Mitchell Sportswoman of the Year award (presented annually to the Gryphons most outstanding graduating varsity athlete). In the fall of 1995, Turley was inducted into the Gryphon Hall of Fame as an athlete.
