First-year coach Caroline Meines carving own path as Bellarmine Prep seeks 4th consecutive state volleyball title
Three years, three state championship trophies.
And then a new coach.
Caroline Meines isn’t Jody DeGroot, who coached Bellarmine Prep to each of the past three 4A state championships and 10 state appearances in 13 years after graduating from the school in 1983.
In that lies the challenge. Meines has learned to incorporate her own principles, while continuing what DeGroot started.
“I’m still adjusting a little bit,” said Meines, who was an assistant under DeGroot for 12 of those 13 seasons. “It’s a little different. It’s been bit by bit that I’ve been setting into it more.”
She’ll be leading Bellarmine Prep at the state championships for the first time this weekend when it enters a first-round match against Jackson at 11:30 a.m. Friday at the Toyota Center in Kennewick — with the Lions hoping to become the second team in 4A tournament history to win four consecutive titles (Mead won five in a row from 2003-2007).
“It’s definitely been different,” said Megan Jacobsen, a captain of a team with just three seniors. “It’s a good change, though. It’s something new. We’ve had to adjust to it and so has she, and it’s been a process. But she has done awesome. It’s great so far.”
Meines said the challenge of this season has been finding an identity, especially with so many young players.
What they’ve discovered is that young isn’t so bad — even if opposing teams give them funny looks for their pregame dances.
Bellarmine Prep won the 4A Narrows League title, with Jacobsen named the league’s most valuable player. The Lions enter the tournament at 26-3-2 — having only lost to Curtis (twice) and top-ranked West Valley (Yakima).
“We’ve just been embracing that we have young players,” Meines said. “We are embracing that they are wacky, crazy and maybe inconsistent at times, though we are working on that. But we’ve been embracing all of that instead of worrying about the things we don’t have.”
DeGroot groomed Meines to eventually take over the job from her first year as an assistant. Meines was a coach at Monroe and Federal Way before joining DeGroot’s staff.
And before that she was a player at Bishop Blanchet — while her sister was the coach.
Meines was a setter for her sister Joanne Uhl (then Gilligan) on Blanchet’s 1991 state title team before heading for Central Washington University. Blanchet earned 13 state berths in Uhl’s 18 seasons as its coach.
She’ll be there to watch Meines lead Bellarmine Prep this weekend.
And carve a career of her own.
“I’m kind of having to find my own voice and my own way,” Meines said. “But it also puts a lot more on the players to take care of the team in a different way because we are all taking care of the program together. I think it’s kind of made them attentive of their team chemistry, knowing things aren’t as familiar. They’ve had to be attentive to what is going to make the team successful instead of relying on the coaches so much.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2015 at 11:10 PM with the headline "First-year coach Caroline Meines carving own path as Bellarmine Prep seeks 4th consecutive state volleyball title."