South Sound volleyball coaching giant Jan Kirk dies — led Fife to four state championships

The volleyball world in the Tacoma-Pierce County area lost a giant this week when longtime Fife High coach Jan Kirk was found dead in her home in north Tacoma on Thursday.

Kirk coached the Trojans from 1987 to 2011, engineering one of the most successful runs of volleyball success in state history at the Class 3A and 2A levels. Her teams won four state championships during the 90s and she finished her career with an overall record of 671-124.

But her influence went far beyond the wins and losses.

“She was a force of nature,” her son and Sumner High athletic director Kelly Kirk said. “She could rub people the wrong way sometimes, but deep down somewhere they always knew she was right and that they should go along. The game is so much better for her influence. I don’t think she set out for that. She just took the opportunity she saw.”

Kelly Kirk saw his mother last Saturday, before he went to Las Vegas for a few days. He said he arrived home late Wednesday, and went over to see his mother on Thursday, where he discovered she had passed away.

“My sister (Shannon) contacted me and said she hadn’t heard from her in a few days,” Kelly Kirk said. “That wasn’t unusual, though. She was 80. Her phone was not her life like it is for so many of us.”

Jan Kirk had high blood pressure medication that she took, Kelly Kirk said.

“The paramedics said it looked like a heart attack or stroke,” Kelly Kirk said. “It may have been that the meds simply caught up with her.”

Jan Kirk had lost her husband, Jerry, a former WSU football player and longtime football and wrestling coach at Kentridge High, almost exactly three years ago on Dec. 20, 2018.

Jan Kirk’s own coaching impact began almost from the moment she arrived back at Fife, the school she graduated from in 1959. Though she was just finding her own way over the first three or four seasons as a first-time high school coach, Kirk already was planting seeds that would expand and improve volleyball over the entire region.

In 1989, she and Kelly founded Puget Sound Volleyball Club. Kirk knew that in order for Pierce County teams to be competitive on anything more than a local level, girls in the area needed to have opportunities to play beyond the two months of the high school season.

In other areas of the state, and in other states, club volleyball already was having an impact.

“She’d take teams down to the Portland area, and at first would get beat up,” Kelly Kirk said. “She liked to win. But they were so far ahead. After a few years, we started to catch up.”

Shortly after starting Puget Sound Volleyball, Kirk started a summer league and invited teams from all over the area to participate.

“That’s what I mean by impacting other programs,” longtime Puyallup High coach Tony Batinovich said. “It was a fund-raiser for her at Fife. But it was not just for Fife High School. She did it for the sport, so kids would get better.”

Kirk’s own program got its first huge bump when Sarah Silvernail transferred into Fife. Silvernail’s 1992 team won league and district titles before advancing and beating Kennedy for the first of four state championships.

It’s one of many memories Silvernail keeps of her last high school coach, and lifelong friend and mentor.

“I thank God I landed in her lap as a senior,” Silvernail said from her home. “I remember one practice in particular. I was 17. I had never been told I was a good passer. I was the tall kid on the outside, you know. Jan had me demo passing at this practice. Right then, I knew. She was going to find anyone’s strengths, even if you weren’t the obvious one.”

Understanding that Silvernail could pass allowed her new star to become a six-rotation player, and it was the thing, Silvernail said, that ultimately allowed her to reach the U.S. National Team. Silvernail said she always kept in touch with Kirk over the years.

“She was more than just a volleyball mentor,” Silvernail said. “That’s pretty cool, isn’t it. When you’re gone, how many people you impacted really says how you lived your life. She set the bar pretty high.”

The Trojans reached the pinnacle again in 1995, when Fife went 36-0 and beat Selah for the title. The Trojans went back-to-back the next season, again beating Selah in the championship match behind sisters Lisa and Renee Beauchene, Erin Miller and Kelby Saxwold. Fife won state again in 1999.

The Beauchenes were two of four sisters that moved through the Fife program under Kirk, along with Angie and Suzanne. Those were just a few of the plethora of successful young women Kirk and her program produced over the years.

“They always used to call Mike Holmgren ‘The Big Show,’” Kelly Kirk said. “I always thought of her the same way.”

Kirk’s teams won 20 league titles and 14 district crowns, finished second, third, sixth and seventh in the state, and fourth three times in addition to the four championships. She was inducted in the Tacoma-Pierce County Hall of Fame in 2016.

When not coaching, Kirk even found time to referee high school volleyball for nine years.

“I just respected the heck out of her,” said Marc Blau, the assignor for the Tacoma-Pierce County Volleyball Officials Organization. “(As a coach) she would snarl at you, make her point, but then go and sit down. There was never a bunch of arm gestures and drama. She was one of a kind.”

Kirk’s competitive nature was well-known and also respected. And that nature went well beyond the court.

Batinovich related a time in Las Vegas, after a tournament involving several Puget Sound teams, when Kirk wanted her coaches (including Batinovich) to try a specific restaurant. When the 25 or so coaches and their significant others arrived, they found the restaurant closed.

But Kirk saw someone inside and got their attention.

“It was the chef,” Batinovich said. “And somehow, she convinced him to open the restaurant for these 25 or so people, and we were treated to this wonderful Italian dinner. She had a way of getting things done, like she did that night.”

Once the competition was over, however, Kirk gave back without reservation. Kelly and Batinovich said she enjoyed just talking about the game, finding out why other coaches did what they did.

Kelly Kirk said he thought his mom would count the endless numbers of players that passed through her programs, many of whom played and coached long after leaving Fife, as her greatest legacy.

“It’s like the stone in the pond, creating the ripples,” Batinovich said. “Her ripples go on forever.”

This story was originally published December 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.