Kennedy Volleyball did not have a strong season in 2023 with a record of 11-27. As the 2024-2025 season kicked off, things were different at the first game. The Cougars introduced their new coaching staff—Head Coach Douglas Palmer and Assistant Coaches Maddison Palmer and Dan Wood.
The Cougars are starting their season with a record of 11-17 and a team kill leader with over 500 kills, senior Ady Hermanson.
“The support from players, parents and the faculty has been outstanding. It’s also been very rewarding to be able to coach with my daughter, and both of us being alumni,” D. Palmer said. “To come back here after all of these years and coach has been a little surreal and to be able to coach with my daughter makes it even more impactful.”
Both Palmers are Kennedy alumni. D. Palmer participated in Kennedy soccer, football and wrestling while M. Palmer played soccer and volleyball.
“I really enjoyed my time with Kennedy volleyball when I was a student. I loved playing and found that some of my closest friends were the ones I played volleyball with,” M. Palmer said. “Our team was very close-knit and had lots of fun moments. I remember the atmosphere in the gym being very competitive with a hard-working mentality. I think that is one way that it is similar to how it is now.”
The Palmers are not the only ones with close connections to Kennedy. Wood has alumni daughters, most recently Laikin Wood who graduated in 2024. All of Wood’s daughters played volleyball. After years of watching his daughters play for both school and club teams, he fell in love with the sport and began coaching.
“I have been an assistant coach for the last two years for Adrenaline,” Wood said. “I was never able to coach any of my daughters in volleyball, but I did coach them all quite a bit in softball and soccer. That experience taught me that I can’t want to play and be successful more than them.”
Palmer is coming into this season with high expectations and goals. After last year’s season, changing the culture and creating a strong team have been his top priorities. Focusing on team mentality over personal mentality has helped the program grow.
“Changing the culture of the program as a whole with a ‘work hard every day and earn your position’ mentality [has been the focus],” D. Palmer said. “To create a program with a team-first mentality and get rid of all the individual mentality.”
One major change to the program’s culture was eliminating the idea of seniority. D. Palmer wanted everyone to compete for their position without consideration of their grade level. This idea resulted in a young team, and with two freshmen, nine sophomores, two juniors and five seniors on the roster, there is a lot of development that has to take place. D. Palmer’s philosophy is that without seniority present, everyone will compete for a position.
“When everyone understands that they have an opportunity to compete, they will all work harder,” D. Palmer said. “Iron sharpens iron.”
Lextyn Pankey, a sophomore libero on the varsity team, feels that having a young team is challenging, but will overall make the program better.
“I feel like right now it’s hard because we have a lack of high school experience, but I think in the future it will be better because we will have been playing together for a while,” Pankey said.
Another change is the reputation of the JV team. The new coaching staff wanted to change this once subdued team into being a competitive force at Kennedy, truly a junior varsity team.
“JV has been awesome. Everyone cheering and pulling for each other is what it is all about–team,” Wood said. “Getting to know each of the girls and working with them to improve has been beyond my hopes of enjoyment and satisfaction.”
The coaching staff now allows select players to be offered to play for both the varsity and junior teams. Seniors Maren Diederich and Julia Thorne and juniors Irelyn Ballard and Lucy McCord were those selected for this season.
“I like being able to get more playing time than I would just being on one team. I also enjoy my teammates on both varsity and JV,” Diederich said. “The negatives would just have to be how time-consuming it is. Playing a school sport is already a big commitment and doubling the amount of games and tournaments you attend can take a lot out of you.”
Changes made by the coaches are to make the team better. In the Cougars’ game against Iowa City West, they showed their new-found team unity by wearing matching breast cancer awareness socks to honor the start of breast cancer awareness month and family members of players.
“This year’s team unity has honestly taken a huge turn from what it was last year. You can tell that the whole team cares for one another and we have great inside jokes,” sophomore Charley Lovell said. “Even though I couldn’t be at the game, I loved seeing the socks from all the pictures. It shows how unified our team has become, coming together to support something bigger.”
