Bittersweet finale
Senior Night is always an emotional one for Julie Yearout.
This year, it will be even harder for the expressive Lewis and Clark volleyball coach. She will be losing a first-team All-Greater Spokane League setter to graduation – her star player – who also happens to be her daughter, Laurie Yearout.
The Tigers’ upcoming bout with the four-time defending State 4A champion Mead Panthers on Tuesday night marks the final time Julie will coach Laurie at the LC field house.
For Laurie, it’s nearly the end of a four-year varsity career that included a fifth-place trophy at the state tournament in 2005 and runner-up status last year after losing to the Panthers in the title game.
Getting there was never easy.
Laurie’s main exposure to the game involved watching highly regarded former LC coach Buzzie Welch.
Julie, who played volleyball at Shadle Park and for four years at Whitworth, was Welch’s assistant before being handed the program in 2002. Laurie recalls spending hours upon hours watching Welch and learning the game from him.
“I grew up watching the game more so than playing when I was little,” said Laurie, who will play next year at Western Washington University in Bellingham. “I would just come to the gym and watch their practices in elementary and middle school.”
Julie recalls the pressure of taking over a program like Welch’s.
“It was terrifying,” Julie admits. “I wasn’t planning on it – but it’s been great. It’s a great program. He built it into something that kind of runs itself.”
Another terrifying moment, which was exciting at the same time, was when Laurie made the decision to come to LC as a freshman.
The Yearout family lives in the Shadle Park district, so Julie knew the decision would raise some eyebrows.
Laurie felt she had to prove herself, especially when she earned a starting position as a sophomore.
She handled the pressure like a champ, developing into one of the league’s finest setters. Her command of the floor is unmatched in the Greater Spokane League except for Mead’s Karyn Mockel, who also made the all-GSL team last year as a junior.
“She didn’t come here to play for me,” Julie said. “A lot of people think I took this to make it easier for her, because she was supposed to go to Shadle. But she bleeds LC – she always has.”
The whole family does.
Tom, Julie’s husband, is the head football coach at LC and Laurie’s sophomore brother plays JV football.
It’s safe to say being an LC Tiger is a family affair for the Yearouts – so much that they hardly spend time together in the fall.
Tom and David do the football thing, while Julie and Laurie spend time on the volleyball court. Their paths cross every now and then – and maybe once a week they get to sit down and have a family dinner.
It’s simply the life of an athletic family.
The end of the era, though, is rapidly approaching, and whatever the negative opinions have been, their time together as player and coach has been time well spent for Laurie and Julie, who will continue to coach at LC.
Neither of them would have had it any other way.
“I think it’s worked out because of who she is,” Julie said. “She is such a strong person. I don’t know where that came from. Her mental state and self confidence – I never had it, I don’t know where she got it – that stuff (negative talk) just rolled off of her, and she heard it all.
“It doesn’t bother her – it never did.”