‘You think I choose to live in a barn?’ How Rose Hill became a volleyball diamond

There is a perception about Rose Hill athletics.

Rose Hill has won back-to-back Class 4A state high school volleyball championships and is poised to win a third in 2018. The Rockets have potentially four college-caliber players and another who is verbally committed for softball.

But few other Rose Hill teams have had remotely the same success since 2015.

Three years ago, the Rockets’ boys soccer team won its second straight 4-1A state title, but just last season, the team finished 9-7-1. Volleyball senior Gracie Van Driel said a lot of students are invested elsewhere.

“The participation in athletics at our school is really down,” she said. “People just don’t really like sports here. People don’t think it’s cool.”

But volleyball has almost always been different.

Van Driel and seniors Breckynn Myers and Analisa Pennington have known one another almost their entire lives. They can even finish each other’s sentences.

“I think we’ve played together,” Van Driel said.

“Since we were 9 years old,” Pennington added

“Before that, maybe,” Van Driel finished.

Now Van Driel is verbally committed to Kansas and is one of the most high-profile players in the state. First-year coach Cherith Mock said the Eagle coming through town was one news organization of about five stretching as far as Topeka. They all wanted to talk to Van Driel.

But Van Driel said she “was awful until I was 14.” Myers, who played with her, said she would jump for a spike and whiff on the ball. Van Driel said she did it on purpose.

“I wanted to make people laugh more than I wanted to play volleyball,” she said. “I would literally do the worm on the bench. Then I finally bounced a ball and thought, ‘Maybe I’m good at this.’ “

That laughter seems to have been the key.

The team is relaxed, even unguarded. The girls know everything about one another, and that undoubtedly helps on the court. But it’s still strange, at least to onlookers, that so much volleyball talent ended up in a city of 4,000.

The girls said it’s just coincidence and a little luck.

Van Driel and Emily Adler, the senior softball standout, live on the east side of Greenwich Road — the dividing line between the Rose Hill and Derby school districts. If they moved across the street, they would wear green.

In fact, Adler’s brother, Grant, is the starting quarterback at Derby and was allowed to go through open enrollment.

Fellow senior Paeten Burke has lived in Rose Hill for years, even if she would have gone elsewhere if she could have.

“You think I choose to live in a barn in the middle of nowhere?” Burke said.

The Rose Hill seniors said they know the public perception is that the Rockets’ volleyball team is amazing while most other teams struggle to compete. But they said they didn’t think it strange that they have become a diamond in the rough.

“I don’t think it’s crazy,” said Myers, who is committed to Southern Nazarene. “I think it just hit me.”

Rose Hill has been building the volleyball program for years to become known as a “volleyball town.” It picked up steam and crested under former Rocket coach Melissa Segovia, who was there for seven years and moved to Valley Center in 2018.

The Rose Hill seniors said Segovia was as strict and organized as they come. Practices were planned down to the minute. There was no cussing or jewelry on the court. And if you weren’t early, you were late.

But her system helped produce results.

Now, by bizarre circumstance, Mock is in, and she is “completely different — night and day,” Van Driel said.

Mock was the assistant volleyball coach at Augusta for seven years before she had her first child. She raised her son for another seven years and was out of high school coaching.

Last year, Mock took an elementary teaching job in Rose Hill and served as the assistant girls basketball coach for the Rockets. And when Segovia left, Mock was thrust into her spot. Mock was originally hired for the assistant spot.

She now leads one of the best volleyball programs in Kansas after seven years away from the sport, and she comes to practice after talking with elementary school children all day.

She said that her job can be daunting, and it is. Rose Hill is 79-10 over the past two years. The Rockets have missed the state playoffs only twice since 2009, and one of them was because “we choked,” Van Driel said.

Luckily for Mock, she said the girls have such a profound understanding of the game, coaching isn’t too hard. The expectations are the hard part.

“No pressure,” Mock joked. “We’re taking things one day at a time. I spent a lot of time this summer just getting back into the swing of things.”

The seniors know the situation, too. They are helping bridge the gap by being leaders and stepping up when needed.

It’s almost completely about having fun for Rose Hill. The girls are best friends. They hang out at practice, in school, after practice and on the weekends.

They have created a bond that goes well beyond a coach or a state championship or even three straight, and that connection is obvious from the instant you start talking with them.

Rose Hill is the favorite to win another state championship in 2018 and further the narrative these seniors have helped create. But even without another state title, they have still achieved something few others at the school ever have: They’ve created a brand.

“We are constantly in the gym from 9 years old,” Pennington said. “When we were in middle school, the high school coaches would come down, so we have been building this for years.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2018 at 12:25 PM.