After five trips to the MHSAA women’s volleyball finals, in 2012 Lakewood finally got the monkey off its back by defeating North Branch for its first Class B state championship. Coach Kelly Rowland started building this program in 1989 and, after taking off seven years to watch her children play high school athletics, returned to Lakewood. “We look at our program in four-year increments,” said Rowland, “to see what we need and where we need to be.”
Lakewood returned to the finals in 2014 and ran into North Branch again, and this time, the Vikings came out on the short end. Led by first team all-state middle blocker Vanessa Reynhout, who was a sophomore on the 2012 Championship team, Lakewood surprised a lot of people by just making it to the final. “We had 2 freshmen, 3 sophomores, and a senior on the floor,” Rowland continued, “so if you asked me last summer, or even a month ago, if I expected to be in the state finals, I would have said absolutely not.”
Coach Rowland used 20 different lineups during the season, trying to find the combination that worked best. “You can’t be scared to take chances, because I have learned that it is all about the postseason.”
Coach Rowland goes to extremes to give Lakewood volleyball a family atmosphere. “The past players who came to the finals to support this team was amazing,” Rowland said. “Volleyball is only the venue to teach many life-long lessons. We have had former players call us from college, who might not be happy with their situation, and ask our advice on how to handle it.”
With only three seniors on the 2014 team, the pressure to win that was there in 2012 did not exist. “I don’t want to say that it was easy this year or that the girls didn’t work hard, because that isn’t true,” Rowland said. “The difference was that in 2012, we had 10 seniors and we were expected to win. This season, with the team being so young, every victory showed the development of each and every girl on the floor.”
With 12 returning players next season, Coach Rowland and the Vikings will inevitably face that familiar pressure that comes with being the favorite.