The volleyball players from St. Charles High School were counting down the days until the first practice of the 2021 season. As the moment grew closer they counted down the hours until Monday morning, when they would step on the court and get the season rolling.
On Friday, however, a curveball was sent their
way. Their school buildings are undergoing construction and renovation projects,
and school officials learned Friday that there was no place in town to hold
volleyball practice. The high school gym is a mess right now, which was no
surprise. Because of that, the gym at the elementary school was the planned-for
practice site, but painting work there that was scheduled to be completed before
Monday will not be finished until (hopefully) later this week.
One option was to hold practice outdoors at four
sand volleyball courts in town. Volleyball coach Tracie Schaber has a connection
with the person in charge of those courts … her husband Rick is the city’s
parks and recreation director. But a better option was right down the road,
less than 10 miles to the west on Highway 14 at Dover-Eyota High School in Eyota.
St. Charles activities director Scott McCready
and his counterpart at Dover-Eyota, John Ostrowski, are close, longtime
friends. So when McCready called Ostrowski on Friday, he couldn’t even finish his
question before Ostrowski said, “What time do you want to practice? We’ll make
it work.”
The Dover-Eyota Eagles volleyball team had
practice scheduled in the afternoon all week, and the St. Charles Saints had
planned to work out in their elementary gym starting at 8 a.m. So the schedules
worked out perfectly, and it didn’t take long to get a bus lined up to get the
Saints’ varsity to Eyota and back every morning this week. The Saints seventh/eighth-grade
and ninth-grade teams are alternating practice times at the elementary
cafeteria in St. Charles, so every team has a home.
After last year, when Covid-19 disrupted
everything associated with school and activities, the coaches, players and
administrators at St. Charles and Dover-Eyota are accustomed to being flexible.
“We were looking forward to some semblance of
normalcy, but our coaches and students are used to things getting thrown at you,”
Tracie Schaber said. “It’s out of our hands, and you’ve got to do what you need
to do to make it work. The kids want to play.”
Monday morning’s scene inside the Eyota gym was
a bit odd, with the Saints practicing underneath artwork of a giant screaming eagle
– a Dover-Eyota Eagle -- on the wall. Both schools are members of the Three
Rivers Conference; they are scheduled to meet Sept. 9 at St. Charles, but there
is some uncertainty about when the Saints’ high school gym will be ready.
The gym floor at Dover-Eyota was resurfaced
last week, and Monday was the first day anyone was allowed to be on it. Ostrowski
told McCready that he and assistant volleyball coach Michelle Anderson (also a
school administrative assistant) would set up the nets on the Eagles’ three
courts Monday morning, asking, “Would you mind if your team came in at 9?’ ”
McCready laughed and said, “If you tell us to come
in at 9 p.m., we’d be there.”
“It’s such a fabulous partnership, we’re good
neighbors,” McCready said.
In the past, the two schools have had cooperative
agreements in track and cross-country, so the administrators have worked closely
together many times. When Dover-Eyota had a transportation issue, for example, St.
Charles sent over a bus to get Eagles athletes where they needed to be.
“Scott and I have kind of scratched each other’s
back many times over the years,” Ostrowski said. “Our relationship is kind of
special in that we’re there for each other a lot.”
Many of the St. Charles volleyball players were
used to riding a bus, having returned Sunday morning on a 20-hour charter bus
excursion from a school trip to Washington, D.C. That makes the ride to Eyota
seem like nothing, even if holding the first practice of the season in a
conference rival’s gym was not quite normal.
“It's a
whole new feel,” said junior captain Lauryn Delger. “It's definitely bigger,
which is nice. We didn’t expect to be in our actual high school gym because of the
construction, but we did expect to be in the elementary gym at least. So it was
definitely unexpected that we're here.”
Captain Emma
Welliver (pictured, right, with Lauryn), the only senior on the varsity roster along with 16 juniors and six
sophomores, said, “We’re making the best out of it, trying to prepare for
volleyball season. Even if it's not our gym, we’re trying to play our best.”
The Saints
played just a handful of matches last fall before Covid stopped everything,
and hopes are high for a full season this fall. The St. Charles softball team
had an exceptional season last spring, finishing 24-5 and advancing to the
Class 2A state championship game, where the Saints fell to LeSueur-Henderson.
Welliver and
Delger, also softball players, hope that experience provides a boost to the
volleyball team.
“It kind of makes you want to strive to get far, get there, get that energy, because
it's so different than the regular season or just regular playoffs,” Lauryn
said of the state softball tournament.
Emma added, “I
think it definitely makes you realize how lucky we were for softball and how
much hard work it took and then you're like, ‘I want to put that on the
volleyball court and do great things.’ ”
No matter
where that court is located.
(Pictured here is the St. Charles High School gym.)
--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of
Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn
and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts.
Contact John at jmillea@mshsl.org
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