Coast Union volleyball coach looks back on successful 2016 season
The 2016 Coast Union volleyball team experienced a heartbreaking CIF Division 9 playoff loss last week (Nov. 1) against Santa Clarita Christian — but they never backed down against that steep competition, coach Pam Kenyon said
“The girls played hard and didn’t let up all night long,” Kenyon recalled. “When you do your best and know that you have given your best effort, then sometimes you have to just shake the other team’s hand and congratulate them on their fine performance.”
No doubt the Lady Broncos were disappointed because they wanted to go deeper in the CIF Division 9 playoffs, and the team had discussed making this match their “best effort to honor their seniors Ahtziri Mora and Gigi Stoothoff.”
“So the team was disappointed that their seniors wouldn’t finish on a win,” Kenyon said. Still, this was a “tight knit group, so the seniors recognized that everyone had done their best. There were lots of hugs and statements like, ‘I will miss you,’ ” said Kenyon, in her 25th year of coaching and teaching at Coast Union.
Kenyon, who began her battle against colon cancer in the winter of 2013, but most recently — in July, 2016 — was declared cancer-free, is “doing well,” she reports. “I still have many doctors’ appointments, and I have good days and bad days,” but her days are “mostly good,” she said.
She is teaching physical education and weightlifting, and she is a “tutoring supervisor” which means she supervises the students that go off campus to tutor elementary and middle school students. “It’s a great schedule for me this year.”
Asked about what her student athletes can learn when they are clearly a stronger team than most schools they play in the Coast Valley League — the Lady Broncos were 10-0 in the CVL this season — she said: “We always have goals for our games.”
The girls played hard and didn’t let up all night long.
Coast Union head coach Pam Kenyon on Coast Union’s first-round CIF playoff loss
In some games, the goal might be “how to run a certain play or to perfect passing … so our goal is to always to come onto the court ready to play our best game.”
And when the fall sports season is launched in 2017, Kenyon’s goal will be to once again teach her student athletes the basic skills — and the refined particulars — required to play winning volleyball.
This story was originally published November 9, 2016 at 9:49 AM with the headline "Coast Union volleyball coach looks back on successful 2016 season."