Lakewood Leader Joins 1,000-Win Club
September 27, 2017
By Dean Holzwarth
Special for Second Half
LAKE ODESSA – Kellie Rowland doesn’t sugarcoat anything when it comes to the hundreds of players she has coached and mentored over 23 seasons.
The longtime Lakewood High School volleyball coach lets players know exactly what she thinks, and it’s a style that has served her well in helping produce one of the most successful programs in the state.
“I’m a highly energetic person, and I’m very black and white,” Rowland said. “I tell it just the way it is, and the girls appreciate that. They would much rather know than trying to guess how I’m feeling.”
Rowland recently joined an elite class of coaches after recording her 1,000th victory on Sept. 9 at the East Kentwood Invitational with a 2-0 win over Grand Rapids Catholic Central.
She is one of only 12 coaches statewide to reach the 1,000 win plateau. Jodi Manore of Temperance-Bedford tops the list and had 1,927 victories entering this season.
Several of Rowland’s former players were in attendance to witness the coaching milestone.
“One thousand wins is a lot of wins, but more than that it’s been the relationships,” Rowland said. “All the girls that came back that evening, and seeing them again as adults and parents and professionals, meant more to me than any single victory.”
Rowland entered the season with a 981-149 record in her 22 seasons at the helm; she led the Vikings from 1991-2002 and then took the program back over in 2009. Her youngest son, Cameron, clued her in to how close she was.
“I don’t keep track,” she said. “I always have to look up my wins and losses because I truly believe in one season at a time and one match at a time. My youngest son reminded me of how many I needed or I would not have known that.”
Lakewood athletic director Mike Quinn said Rowland’s dedication and commitment to her players has had a profound effect on the program.
“Her coaching goes beyond the wins she has accumulated,” he said. “She just has a rapport with all of the girls and she is such a student of the game that she is involved in. I believe she would be just as successful no matter what sport she coached. She just happened to fall into volleyball.
“Kellie is one of the most competitive people you’ll ever meet, but she prepares so well that winning becomes a by-product of everything else that they do. She cares so much about Lakewood volleyball and the impact that it has on our community.”
During her career, the Vikings have won countless league championships, in addition to 10 MHSAA Regional titles, three Finals runner-up finishes and a Class B championship in 2012.
They’ve reached the Finals in three of the past five seasons.
“I’ve been real fortunate,” Rowland said. “I’ve had just dedicated athletes. I can’t say that I’ve had Big Ten recruits, but they work so hard every day to achieve the ultimate goal of trying to win a state championship.”
Multiple past standouts have followed their Lakewood mentor into coach. Chelsea Lake finished her career in 2010 as a Miss Volleyball Award candidate playing middle for the Vikings, and took what she learned from Rowland into her playing career at Cornerstone University. She’s now an assistant coach for the
“I wouldn't be where I am today without her or have had the volleyball career I did if she wasn't my coach,” Lake said. “People who have never had her as a coach fear her and think she is too intense, but in reality she cares so much about her players and believes in them. That passion and love for them (is) why she pushes every single one of her players to be the best they can be. Why do something half-heartedly?
“She demands the most out of you, day in and day out, and by the end of practice you've given more than you ever thought you could,” Lake added, recalling changing shirts midway through every practice because the first was soaked with sweat. “She instills confidence in her players to the point you can walk into any gym and know you worked 10 times harder than anyone else in that gym and deserve to win.”
The buy-in starts early. Lake recalled as a junior starting alongside another junior and four freshmen, with a junior defensive specialist and a fifth freshman coming off the bench. Those freshmen went on to make up the nucleus of Lakewood’s Class B title-winning team in 2012.
“Kellie has built the Lakewood program from the ground up. She gets the young girls to buy into the program, and by the time they're freshmen they're better than most other schools' JV and varsity players,” Lake said. “Therefore, when they're seniors, they're college-type players.
“She knows how to develop kids and as long as Kellie is at the helm, that program will continue to grow, dominate, and flourish under her.”
Senior Lisa Hewitt said Rowland maintains high expectations for every team.
“She never expects anything less than perfection from us,” she said. “She always demands us to be our best 100 percent of the time. She is definitely deserving of her 1,000 wins.”
And Erica Potter, another of six seniors on this year’s squad, was happy to be a part of a special moment for Rowland.
“I think we were all very proud of her for reaching that great achievement, and she’s a great coach,” Potter said. “She’s always pushing us to be our best every day at practice, and she makes us work hard no matter what.”
This year’s team is vying for another trip to the MHSAA Finals after falling short in the Class B championship match a year ago against North Branch.
Lakewood entered this week ranked third in Class B, boasting an impressive 31-4 mark.
“They are playing well, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us,” Rowland said. “We have a new setter on the court after Gabi (Shellenbarger) graduated and we had her for four years. That setter spot is so crucial to a team, so we are still working through a lot of that.”
The seniors understand the path to the Finals is a process.
“We definitely talk about making it to the state finals because we’ve been there twice, and that’s certainly our goal, but we try to take it one match at a time,” Potter said. “We want to look at the big picture, but we can’t get too ahead of ourselves.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Lakewood coach Kellie Rowland celebrates with her team after last season’s Class B Semifinal win over Cadillac. (Middle) Rowland provides instruction during the first set of the 2012 championship match victory.
'On the Map:' Nwabueze Hitting Rising Bloomfield Hills Into Championship Mix
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
October 30, 2025
BLOOMFIELD HILLS – Those who have kept an eye on the Division 1 state volleyball rankings this season may have done a double take at least a few times throughout the fall.
Was that Bloomfield Hills consistently ranked among the top five and now No. 2 in the latest coaches poll? Ahead of state powers such as Farmington Hills Mercy and Bloomfield Hills Marian?
Yes, that has been the case.
“I think we’ve put ourselves on the map this year,” said senior Kayla Nwabueze.
To those more familiar with Bloomfield Hills, it’s easier to see the biggest reason why the Blackhawks have become such a force – Nwabueze’s transcendent talent.
A finalist for the Miss Volleyball Award, she just surpassed 2,000 career kills, 1,000 career digs and 1,300 career receptions, and owns the school record for kills (2,013 heading into Wednesday’s match against Rochester).
Nwabueze has excelled at multiple positions on the court throughout her high school and club careers. But this season, first-year Bloomfield Hills head coach Brian Kim decided to put Nwabueze exclusively at outside hitter, and she had delivered with 547 kills heading into that Rochester match.
“It allowed her to have a more defined role in our offense,” Kim said. “Middle is her primary position, and she is extremely strong and capable in the middle. But we moved her to the outside to help out our offense.”
Nwabueze didn’t start club volleyball until age 12. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have skills already developed. Nwabueze has an older sister, Ashlea, who played the sport, and the two would constantly do drills and have practice sessions together before Kayla got into club ball.
“We definitely were playing outside,” Kayla said. “She definitely taught me to play volleyball in the backyard and helped me grow in volleyball.”
As much of a surgeon as Nwabueze is on the court – showing exceptional precision with her hitting – she wants to be an even better one off the court one day.
Nwabueze will play college volleyball at Harvard, where she wants to study medicine and ultimately become an orthopedic surgeon.
Nwabueze carries a 4.0 grade-point average attending the prestigious International Academy in Bloomfield Hills, which doesn’t have sports programs and allows students to play sports in the Bloomfield Hills district.
While she had overtures to play for more prominent college volleyball programs, the academic side of things was more of a priority – making Harvard the fit.
“I was just thinking about more than just volleyball and what I wanted to do after the fact,” said Nwabueze, who also considered Yale. “Harvard really had a nice plan for me.”
But there is more business to be taken care of in the coming weeks before Nwabueze starts focusing on that part of her future.
First, she is a legitimate candidate to become the first player in school history to win the Miss Volleyball Award.
More importantly, she wants to help Bloomfield Hills continue what’s been a historic season.
The Black Hawks will play in a District next week at Troy Athens, where a likely District Final matchup with No. 4-ranked and neighbor Bloomfield Hills Marian awaits.
Each team has a bye into Wednesday’s semifinal round, and barring major upsets, they should get through to face each other on Nov. 7.
“It is special to know that I broke some of the records here and set that bar,” Nwabueze said. “We have done so good this year, and we are still going and are still playing hard. I hope we can go farther.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTO (Top) Bloomfield Hills’ Kayla Nwabueze (19) winds up for a kill attempt this season against Lake Orion. (Photo by Kristina Sikora/KMS Photography. Headshot by Keith Dunlap.)