Coupeville Sports

Kim Meche (left) at her niece’s high school graduation in 2010.

When the end comes for those we love, those who matter to us, we all handle it in a different way.

Some of us are loud about it. Others are quiet and draw the pain inside.

We all grieve in our own way, and who is to say one way is better than another?

But what we shouldn’t miss is the chance to let those people know how we feel while we still have the chance.

Death comes in many ways, some quick, some slow. We don’t always have a chance to express our feelings before departure.

In the case of former Wolf volleyball coach Kim Meche, there is still a chance. A chance for those who played for her, those who had her as a teacher or principal, those who covered her teams, or those who merely bumped into her and thought, “There goes a really nice person,” to say so.

The news is not good right now in Kim’s battle with cancer. While there is always hope, it is dimmer than before.

But she can still hear the well-wishes of those she knew for a lifetime or met for a moment.

Take the time, a moment of your day, and leave a message for her on the blog that is documenting her fight. When she is awake, the messages are being read to her.

Reach out and let her know she is now, and forever, a huge part of Wolf Nation.

Let her know she is loved.

https://www.mylifeline.org/mechek/default.cfm?page=welcome.cfm

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Kirsty Croghan

Kirsty Sue is coming home.

Former Coupeville High School volleyball star (and Videoville clerk extraordinaire) Kirsty Croghan has been hired as the new volleyball coach for the Wolves. Croghan, who will be joined by new assistant coach Breanne Graham, replaces Toni Crebbin, who retired after 20 seasons at CHS.

Croghan, a 2006 Coupeville grad, has been an assistant in La Conner, helping with a very successful program there.

When I heard that Kirsty had applied for the position, I wrote a piece that I didn’t run. It would have been a public plea to have her hired, but, being smarter than I am, Ms. Croghan asked me to hold off and let the process play out naturally.

Now that CHS Athletic Director Lori Stolee has made the hire of the year, I’m going to run that original piece:

This is a rare moment in time.

Coupeville High School stands at a crossroads. Longtime volleyball guru Toni Crebbin called it an (early) day, so she could watch her young daughters grow up and be there for them as they play sports, play piano and just play.

As much as we will miss Crebbin — and we will, as she was one of the best coaches I have worked with in 23 years of covering sports on-and-off on Whidbey Island — the reality is, she isn’t coming back, but Wolf volleyball rolls on.

The program is in a good place. Crebbin never succumbed to the idea that Coupeville couldn’t compete, just because it was the smallest of three 1A schools in a league that also houses five 2A schools. Her teams carried her fighting spirit onto the floor every night.

Eight of the 11 girls on this year’s varsity can return next year. Hailey Hammer and Madeline Strasburg have two years left, while Breeanna Messner, Amanda Fabrizi, Sydney Aparicio, Megan Oakes, Haley Sherman and Allie Hanigan form the core of a rock-solid group that will be seniors next season.

There is talent at the JV level, talent at the middle school level, talent all around.

And now there is a chance. A chance to bring in a coach who could fire this program through the roof.

Her name is Kirsty Croghan, CHS class of 2006, and she should be the next head volleyball coach at Coupeville High School.

Listen, I don’t conduct the interviews. I don’t make the hires. I don’t know who else has applied or will apply before the search wraps early in 2013.

Hey, maybe Andy Banachowski, the winningest coach in Division 1 womens’ college volleyball history when he retired from UCLA in 2010, will up and move to Whidbey Island on a whim and decide he wants a new challenge.

Could happen. Won’t. But could.

But, barring a Banachowski miracle, Ms. Croghan is the one.

She is everything CHS needs. A former star player as a Wolf, a link to the rightly-revered Crebbin, a coach who has honed her skills as an assistant in the top-level volleyball program at La Conner.

At 25, she is old enough to be the voice of authority and young enough to step onto the court and show her team the way you play the game.

She is living proof to the players of today of what you can accomplish when you come out of Coupeville. She excelled on The Rock, she went away and excelled and now is the time to welcome her back home.

I’m not going to pretend I am impartial here. I am not.

I covered Kirsty when she played volleyball and, more importantly, we worked together at Videoville. From my 12 years spent behind the video counter as manager, Kirsty Sue remains on a very short list of my absolute favorite people.

She is exactly what the Wolves need right now. Barring a change of heart from Crebbin … and she’s saying no … or a Banachowski surprise … and he’s saying, please stop writing me, I’m getting a restraining order … Croghan is our past, our present and our future all mixed together in one dynamic young woman.

Hiring her would energize the base. Would inspire Wolf Nation. Would be a move you look back on 20 years later and say, “Why did we even debate this?”

I am calling on every one of my readers to reach out to CHS Athletic Director Lori Stolee (who likes to monitor this blog with a side of Alka-Seltzer) and let her know — WE WANT KIRSTY!!

Write her. Call her. Email her. Talk to her next time you run into her at a game (she’s at all of them).

This is a rare moment in time. It’s Kirsty Sue time!

Wednesday, the dream came true.

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I doubt that Kim Meche remembers who I am. Which is fine, because I remember her.

Our paths crossed early in my newspaper career, when she was a volleyball coach and I was pretending to be a Sports Editor at the Whidbey News-Times.

She was always smiling, on the court and off. She took great delight in teaching her beloved game to young athletes and they responded to her joy, to her knowledge, to her deep caring for them as athletes and as young women.

I asked stupid questions (still do…), but she always pretended like I had some clue of what I was talking about when we met after a match.

She made my life a lot easier than she had to, and remains one of the coaches whose mix of skill, grace and good cheer has remained with me long after our paths uncrossed.

I knew she left Whidbey, moved out of coaching and went into school administration. I heard bits and pieces over the years, as she moved up in her profession and impacted the lives of countless children.

I had heard, in passing, that she was battling cancer. I didn’t realize until tonight, when I saw a link to the page she uses to update people, how tough her fight had become.

Another coach who helped me in the early days, Deb Whittaker, passed away from cancer.

My aunt, Loni Kuberka, battled the disease for most of my life until she passed two summers ago.

I have watched, along with other Wolf fans, as Kacie and Katie Kiel’s mother, a very sweet woman, has battled cancer this year.

Every time I have gone to a volleyball or basketball game this year, I have always looked for her first. Each time I see her there, usually just a few feet from where I sit, I say a silent thank you that she has made it through another round of chemo, another day.

There is no point in talking about what a horrid disease cancer is. We all know that.

But there is a point in talking about the people who are fighting it. In letting them know we are there with them.

Kim Meche is fighting right now, and if she is anything like the woman I remember, she is doing it with a smile on her face.

In my video store days, we used to religiously watch a VHS tape of the greatest moments in Oscar history. One of those moments came in 1977, when Bob Hope paused to speak through the camera directly to John Wayne, who was fighting cancer.

The words, tweaked a bit, fit here as well.

“This is a word to one of Coupeville’s biggest. She’s in the fight of her life right now and we want you to know, Kim, we miss you tonight. We expect to see you amble out here in person next year during volleyball season, because no one else can walk in Kim Meche’s shoes.”

John Wayne walked across that Oscar stage in 1978.

I want to see Kim Meche come back to a school and a town that has not forgotten her, and walk back into the CHS gym one day, a gym she made a better place for her presence.

https://www.mylifeline.org/mechek/default.cfm?page=welcome.cfm

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