Squat’s group made big leap

Linda Sheridan’s core message during her storied Shadle Park coaching career never deviated. She told her girls that they could be anything they wanted.

Risk it, she would say. Trust. Don’t be afraid to fail. Success will follow, not only in athletic competition, but in life. The girls bought in.

“Basically she wanted us to find what we were passionate about and pursue that,” said Mead coach Judy Kight. “I loved being coached by someone who believed in us and pushed us into being something more than we thought we could be.

“I knew I wanted to coach.”

Coach she does, as one of six former Highlanders who today are carrying on Sheridan’s pioneering legacy and have built successful volleyball programs.

“I took the best of what Squat (Sheridan) had to offer and went from there,” said Kight, whose team is chasing a third consecutive State 4A title.

Kight, Stacey Ward, Brooke Cooper, Julie Yearout and Holly Daniels all coach teams in the Greater Spokane League. The sixth, Kara Moffatt at Lakeside of Nine Mile Falls, whom Sheridan calls the best scout she had, got her start in the league, coaching at Rogers from 1983-86.

Sheridan had more than 800 victories and seven state championships in volleyball and basketball. Her students have surpassed Sheridan’s five state volleyball championships with a combined seven.

Kight and Moffatt have three apiece and Ward, for 16 years coach at Ferris, has the seventh. Cooper placed third at state after becoming Sheridan’s replacement at Shadle in 1999. The newcomers are Yearout, with top-three GSL finishes in her first three years at Lewis and Clark, and Daniels, in her first year at Cheney.

Although their athletic careers span the length of the 24-year Sheridan era at Shadle, they share similar Sheridan experiences and all are linked in other ways as well.

All were influenced by the approach Sheridan took to coaching which dealt with the total person, not just the athlete.

“When Linda told you that you could play and do something special as a group, you believed her,” Ward said. “It was magic in some ways.”

Kight and Ward graduated together in 1979. Three went on to play at Whitworth. Most assisted Sheridan, and Daniels was an assistant for Yearout before taking the Cheney job.

Judy (Wareham) Kight and Stacey (Shagool) Ward played when GSL volleyball was a much different game than it is today. Kight, the team MVP, said that back when she was setter all you did was stand in the middle front and put the ball up high.

“It was ridiculous, really,” she said.

A Whitworth graduate, she assisted at Shadle and has served two stints at Mead, from 1986-89 and again beginning in 1994 after taking time out to raise children.

Her unbeaten Panthers are nearing their fifth league title. She entered the year with a 352-125 record and eight top-five state places since ‘89.

“Linda influenced me a lot. She was basically my mentor and inspiration,” Kight said. “She got me to thinking about coaching and how great it could be.”

Ward had been a club gymnast and didn’t play volleyball until her sophomore year at Shadle. She admits she tested her coach.

“We battled and I was a big jerk part of the time,” she said.

But something in Sheridan’s message got through, and volleyball ultimately became her sport of choice. Ward said she became a student of the game while sitting “deep on the bench” at Whitworth.

After winning three GSL gymnastics championships at North Central, Ward transferred to Ferris with an eye toward coaching volleyball in part because of fewer time constraints after having children.

She entered the year with a 385-106 record since becoming coach, with five league titles, 15 playoff appearances and six state trophies, including the title in 1997 and two runner-up finishes.

Sheridan said she is awed that the two have succeeded while juggling coaching and family, which she didn’t have to do.

“Both are incredibly intelligent and prided themselves on being students of the game when it was new,” said Sheridan. “They wanted to do more than others at that time period when avenues were just opening to women.”

By the time Cooper and Daniels graduated from high school and 1983 Shadle grad Yearout decided to coach, such opportunity was taken for granted.

But Cooper, just 27 when named Shadle’s second volleyball coach, had an unenviable task. She had big shoes to fill.

The 1990 Shadle grad got in on the era when the Highlanders won two state volleyball and two state basketball titles in succession. Eight years later she was head coach.

“I hid it well, but inside I doubted myself every step of the way,” said Cooper. “It was, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’ve got to live up to Linda.’ “

Sheridan was still teaching and there for advice. She reminded Cooper of her mantra: Take the risk and go for it.

“Once I had permission,” said Cooper, “I went from there.”

The Highlanders finished third in state her first year. Last year was the only season in seven that Shadle didn’t qualify for the district playoffs. The Highlanders are third in league this year.

“Brooke is probably closest to me in terms of the style they play,” said Sheridan. “She played for me, coached for me and was one of the best floor leaders I ever had.”

Like Cooper, Julie (Cordes) Yearout took over for a revered coach, Buzzie Welch, at LC. A non-teacher, she came to coaching by accident and it got in her blood.

“It actually started when my daughter, (Laurie, a junior right-side hitter for the Tigers) went to a Shadle camp in Brooke’s first year,” said Yearout. “I kind of stayed around and helped her.”

She assisted Welch before taking over the Tigers. She’s come to Sheridan for advice. Her teams have gone 29-8 in the GSL with a regional appearance.

“She would come to me and have a million questions and they were just great questions,” said Sheridan, “at a whole level different than most were thinking.”

Yearout said that having Holly (Horn) Daniels and another Shadle grad, Heather Hertz, as assistants, helped bridge the Sheridan gap years after her graduation.

“She was pretty direct when I played for her,” Yearout said. “They brought everything they’d learned and I discovered I was more influenced by Linda than I knew.”

Daniels, a 1994 Shadle grad, was a member of Sheridan’s final state titlist. At Cheney, the team has won just once, but in “The Book of Holly,” as she calls it, this is just the start of a process designed to instill the same tenets of volleyball in her players, as she learned from Sheridan.

Holly grew up around the program when her older sister, Shannon, played there. She played nearly every position during a four-year career.

“I moved her around, and Holly would grin and do whatever it took,” said Sheridan. “As far as being unselfish, she might be at the top of the heap among the kids I ever coached.”

She became Sheridan’s most successful collegian, playing at Oregon State and Montana.

Volleyball is, the coaches say, the true team sport. Every player is involved in the action, and you can’t rely on a superstar. The dynamics of interaction among girls makes it attractive.

Women coaches, they believe, seem better able to meld disparate personalities together for the common good – and, said Kight, Sheridan was the guru. That may be the greatest strength imparted on her protégés.

“I was pretty fired up to be a basketball coach,” said Kight. “But there’s something special about volleyball. You have to have this synergy and for some reason I didn’t notice it so much in the other sports.”

“Women like being part of a group, part of a team,” Ward said. “The highest good in (Sheridan’s) system was how it feels to connect and belong.”