Coming as no surprise to anyone who has known me, athleticism would not be used to describe any part of my being. I avoided sweating for any reason even as a small child. I was a very internal child preferring reading to going outside to run, skip, and you can just forget anything that required jumping. Moving into the teenage years and college years the most athletic thing I did was march with the band while blowing a horn. So, to everyone’s surprise, including mine, for 21 years I lived in the world of cheerleading. That story line has already been introduced. Having spent 21 years sitting on bleachers of every type and safety level in the cold, rain, even a hurricane in stadiums and gyms across the the Gulf Coast, when I left cheerleading behind, I left athletic events in my rearview mirror.
In 1994 I was lucky enough to go back to CFISD, Cy-Creek High School, as senior government/economics teacher. No extracurricular events and no dragging home late at night after watching one game after another, ad infinitum. I will tell you that Cy-Creek had some fantastic male athletes. Young men who would later become NFL players and Olympic swimmers, state winners on teams that did include young women. However, during their time in my classroom very little was said about their prowess on the field, on the court, or in the pool. School spirit had dwindled almost to nothing in most high schools in Texas, with Creek being one. School spirit was motto driven “you just can’t hide that Cougar pride,” and pep rallies were held at strange times only two or three per year. Honestly, that was fine with me. Until…
In 1997 in my fifth period government class, I had an unusual trio of young women. First, let’s remember that I am barely 5”1” on a good day. These three young women walk in my room into my room and they are very, very, very, tall and very athletic. I thought “Oh MY!” “I’m going to have to make them kneel so I can look them in the eye.” This was August so when they told me they played volleyball, I was like “Meh.” Like many standing in the stupid corner, I saw volleyball as the easy sport for girls. At this point, Linda Kubiak and Debbie Jaehne will be cursing me if they were to read this This what people did on the beach or in the backyard or at church camp. I had the same attitude towards volleyball that people had had about cheerleading. There was a part of me that probably thought that these girls were biding their time waiting for basketball to start. (Laveta Christian, you would have killed for the height on these girls.) August begins and they start playing in those early tournaments. On the morning announcements there would be one that would say Creek Volleyball won this tournament; so and so was all-tournament, etc. After a month of the endless wins, save for Friendswood, I thought to myself “I teach Kristy Rhodes. I teach Suzanne Wright. I teach Ashley Sheffield. Heck! I had even taught their Coach!” Maybe I should pay more attention. The other starting seniors were across the hall in Judy Henderson’s (now Thurn) classroom. I think between the two of us, we taught the varsity starting senior line-up. Judy would try to get me to come to the games and I would decline. As September rolled into October, the announcements kept announcing the volleyball team was now first in our district with game after game was being won. I would do my teacher duty and congratulate them. Finally, one of the young women, I think it was Kristy, asked me to come to their game. I figured why not? The one good thing in my mind was that volleyball games were shorter than football or basketball. Here’s what I saw and learned:
You know warm-ups for anything are tedious and boring. That’s why they are done before a game I noticed the gym was getting crowded and my interest was piqued. Here come the Cy-Creek girls in this line by height running around the court. The coach moves to the net where she throws the ball up as if had been “set” by the setter, Marissa. Here come Kristy Rhodes from the far edge of the court…step, step, step, a little hop/skip, takes off from the floor, rises ABOVE THE FREAKING NET and KABOOM! I had never seen anything like that in my life. She lands, no expression, and walks off like it was no big thing. Then here comes the other girls, Suzanne, Ashley, and Danielle, doing their version of getting the ball over the net with one or two matching Kristy’s spike of death. The other team often would just stand there after hearing the first explosion. I’m sure they were thinking “Winter is Coming. Winter is Coming!” [ that’s for you GOT people reading this.] Or to paraphrase Roy from “Jaws” the coach of the other team was thinking “We’re goanna need a bigger boat full of taller girls.”
I, the one who sworn off of attending games, was hooked.
From that moment I went to every game, to play offs no matter how far. It was the same thing game after game. I’m not sure Coach Jaehne’s strategy, but I like to think she sent Kristy out first to scare the living hell out of the other teams and then turned the others loose. It was not all the earth shaking spikes, I began to see the game play in what they did; the movement of people on the floor and how each position was supposed to work. For example, the setter, Marissa, created the ability for the other girls to “lower the boom.” If she missed her set, the thunder was not quite there. Their 5-A state final in Austin was a sight to behold. The gym was packed on both sides and I was crammed right in the middle of Judy Henderson and Diane Meyer. You would have thought we were at a Super Bowl.
Here’s what I learned that year. The girls I taught were called the Triple Towers by me. I hit most of them at the waistline. They sat in a line across in my room. I learned that they had been playing for a long time, some doing the league thing travelling across the states. They played often to a slim crowd because, girls’ sports; yet, they played as if there were on national television stage. Their most loyal supporters were, of course, their parents. I know that Kristy’s mom, Karen, never missed a game anywhere. They were not flashy or always talking about what they had done. As they were winning and killing every opponent, the football team was having a losing season and still garnered all the attention. (don’t hate...it was what it was). They were, to my knowledge, never in academic trouble. In fact, they were really good students. They never were sent to the assistant principal’s office for anything. They were kind to other students and as a teacher, they were awesome to teach.
As they got ready to graduate, the athletic scholarships came pouring in. Four of the starting seniors went on to receive offers from schools in Texas and Tennessee. I think of this from time to time, and once again don’t kill the messenger: had these been four senior young men from one team, the noise would have been heard from coast to coast. We heard about their exploits from the Coach and then had to find out from the girls if it was true. They went on to college, played their sport, and GOT THEIR DEGREES! Some are teachers; some are mothers, and they all have lived and hopefully, will continue to live great lives. Looking back, they were in that first run of female athletes that would change the world of sport In the years to come. We would witness, the USA Women’s Soccer Team, see Mia Hamm idolized, watch Pat Summit and her Lady Vols capture TV audiences and national titles, and the list goes on and on. I look back after 46 years and consider the Creek Volleyball Team of that year one of the best things about my career.
I can still “feel the earth move under my feet” when Kristy got the spike just right.
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