St. Phil's Winning Ways Lead to Summer Celebration, Fall Anticipation
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
August 24, 2021
BATTLE CREEK — Last season’s Division 4 championship gave Battle Creek St. Philip 11 over coach Vicky Groat’s 22 seasons leading the program.
But those stats are a bit off. They do not include the three Class D titles she won as a player at St. Phil, giving her 14 overall.
“We won three state titles with Mom in ’83, ’84, ’85 and were in the final four in ’82,” Groat said.
“Mom” is Sheila Guerra, who led the Tigers to nine Finals championships while guiding the program from 1982-1997. Together, the mother-daughter duo has accounted for 20 of the school’s MHSAA-record 21 state volleyball titles. (The first was under coach Becky Emrich in 1979.) Those 21 championships, in fact, are more than twice as many as any other volleyball program in the state, and the Tigers’ 30 MHSAA Finals appearances are 17 more than the next best achiever.
That incredible success was recognized in July when Groat was named the National High School Athletic Coaches Association’s Volleyball Coach of the Year.
Guerra died in May 2006. But Mom was very much on Groat’s mind as she received her award. While accolades, awards and championships continue to pile up, Groat said her mother is the foundation for it all.
“Mom always encouraged me, and there are still things I do today that she did,” Groat said. “It may be old school, but it still works.”
And the Tigers will have another strong chance this fall to show how.
Plenty to celebrate
Groat did not tell her players that she was a finalist for the award but they found out anyway, said senior standout Brooke Dzwik, an all-state first-team outside hitter last season.
“(The players) went on this camping trip up to Leland and stayed in Coach (Laurie) Glass’ backyard,” Dzwik said. “We were also with Notre Dame Prep and Bronson. Four winning coaches.”
Dzwik said Bronson coach Jean LaClair spilled the beans, telling the players the news.
“(The other coaches) were teasing (Groat) about having a speech prepared and she was like ‘No way,’” Dzwik said.
Groat texted her players a picture of herself with the trophy, and during the first day of tryouts in August, the girls welcomed the coach with a few signs, a balloon, a card and Mountain Dew, “her favorite,” Dzwik said.
“We were just overjoyed because no one deserves it more than her.
“She walked in (to the gym) and I think she was pretty happy, but she doesn’t like the attention on her so she will never admit it.”
After her mom retired after the 1996-97 season, Groat took over, stepped away for 1999-2000 but then returned to direct the Tigers again for the last two decades.
No one, including Groat, expected her team to win the Division 4 title after starting last season with a 23-13 record, just nine athletes on the team and no junior varsity to draw from in case of injury.
“I begged (current senior) Alex Kersten to come out — she’s a cross country runner — and she did,” Groat said.
After a two-month delay because of the pandemic a year ago, practice was held outside at Battle Creek’s Bailey Park.
“We started off in the sand, and we were grateful that we were even allowed to get together and see everyone’s faces for the first time,” Dzwik said.
“It was awful at first, but (playing in sand) definitely made our legs stronger by the end of the season, and we were thankful for it.”
This year, expectations are much higher.
The Tigers lost just one player, Harleen Deol, to graduation and return five seniors also including Rachel Myers, Alexis Snyder and Bailey Fancher. Fancher made the all-state third team last season at libero.
“I feel more pressure now,” Dzwik said. “We didn’t have an amazing record last year and then pulled out a win.
“This year, we do have a (championship) win, so we placed a target on our backs.”
This season already includes a “first” for St. Phil.
“For the first time in St. Phil history, we have an eighth grader, Charli Greger (on varsity),” Groat said. “We were under 100 students last year, so we could have eighth graders play this year.
“Right now, we’re at 100 (students) so next year we won’t be able to have eighth graders.”
Other players are juniors Maddie Hoelscher and Kate Doyle and sophomores Rylee Altman and Makenzee Grimm.
Groat also has a junior varsity team for the first time in two years – a really good thing, she said.
“Take out the five seniors next year and I’m left with four players if I don’t have a JV team,” she said. “We brought eighth graders up to the JV team with four freshmen.
“Never thought we’d have to do that, but we want a program. I couldn’t imagine not having a St. Phil volleyball team. That would be a sad day.”
Family tradition
While a student at St. Phil, Groat was coached by her mother in volleyball and track. In addition, Groat’s father Lou coached basketball at the school.
Her parents as her coaches was not always an easy combination for a young teen.
“It’s always the coach’s kid who gets the brunt of it.” Groat said. “I still remember one of my friends and I were fighting during volleyball and my mom was blaming me. I was like, what about her?
“In track if she had no one to run something, ‘Vicky, you’re going to do it.’ But it was fun.”
Groat, who is also principal and athletic director at the school, credits her parents for not only her coaching success, but her life skills.
“I learned from the best.” she said. “I try to carry both their philosophies in the way they treated people.
“My mom was tough on kids, but if anybody needed anything, she was the first one there. She pushed hard and had high expectations, but she really was a softie inside. People still don’t believe me on that.”
Groat relies on one other person who is like family: assistant coach Angela Williams Frost.
“We call her Willi,” Groat said. “She’s been a great assistant for 18 years. She was a head coach at Springport and could be a head coach anywhere in the state.
“She’s very talented and smart. It makes my job easier knowing that Willi is there. I’ll be in practice and someone will come to the door for me and Willi is there to take over.”
July’s recognition was a total surprise, Groat said, deflecting any accolades. But it also can be regarded as deserved praise for her work teaching an abundance of lessons she learned herself as part of the volleyball program and the Guerra coaching tree.
“It’s just so much about my kids, the kids who have been here and who have played in our system,” she said. “It’s not a big school; we have our traditions, and they buy into it. It’s been great.
“Hopefully over the years we, as coaches, have taught them the important things in life, the life lessons that they will carry on. Sports are an important part of it, but there are other things involved.”
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Battle Creek St. Philip coach Vicky Groat holds up a picture of her mother, Sheila Guerra, with whom she’s combined to lead the Tigers to 20 of their 21 MHSAA Finals volleyball championships. (Middle) Senior Brooke Dzwik shows some of the signs she and teammates made to celebrate Groat’s national Coach of the Year recognition. (Below) Then-junior Bailey Fancher serves during last season’s Division 4 title match. (Top and middle photos by Pam Shebest.)
Leland's Glass Childress Selected as 11th Michigan Inductee Into NFHS Hall of Fame
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
March 9, 2026
More than two decades have passed since Alisha Glass took her final swing at a volleyball in a Leland High School uniform, and yet her accomplishments for her small-town school in Northern Michigan remain among the most notable in that sport’s history not just statewide, but at the national level.
Glass, now Alisha Glass Childress – who went on to star on three Penn State national championship teams and help the U.S. national team to a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics – will have her record-setting high school career enshrined this summer as one of 12 honorees announced today as this year’s inductees into the National High School Hall of Fame by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).
Childress will be inducted as part of the 43rd Hall of Fame class at a ceremony during the NFHS summer meeting June 29 in Salt Lake City. The rest of the class is made up of four more athletes, three coaches, two game officials, one former state association administrator and one former fine arts educator. Childress was nominated by the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
She will become the Hall of Fame’s 11th inductee from Michigan, joining the MHSAA’s first full-time Executive Director Charles E. Forsythe (inducted 1983), River Rouge boys basketball coach Lofton Greene (1986), Warren Regina athletic director, softball and basketball coach Diane Laffey (2000), Fennville basketball and baseball standout Richie Jordan (2001), Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett boys and girls tennis coach Bob Wood (2005), Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook hockey standout Jim Johnson (2007), Owosso football, basketball and baseball all-stater Brad Van Pelt (2011); Vermontville Maple Valley baseball national record holder Ken Beardslee (2016), retired MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts (2022) and Dearborn Heights Robichaud football, basketball and track & field star Tyrone Wheatley (2024).
“My high school career at Leland, surrounded by such an amazing support system and community, was the essential first chapter of my story. It cultivated the grit and the fundamental love for the game that allowed me to reach the highest levels of athletics,” Childress said. “I’m proud of every medal and trophy, but I’m just as proud of the roots I planted back in high school that made them all possible.”
Childress graduated from Leland in 2006 with national high school career records of 3,584 kills, 680 blocks and 937 aces, and 296 aces for one season as a junior. Her aces records still stand, her career kills record stood until broken in 2024 by Shelby’s Navea Gauthier, and she remains third on the career blocks list. Glass continues to hold MHSAA records for single-season and career aces and also for her 48 kills in Leland’s 2005-06 Class D Final win over Battle Creek St. Philip. Childress also led Leland to a Class D runner-up finish in 2004-05 and the Semifinals in 2003-04. (All three tournament runs took place while girls volleyball was still played during the winter season before moving to the fall to begin the 2007-08 school year).
Childress earned the Miss Volleyball Award and Gatorade Player of the Year Award for Michigan as a senior, and her name is listed 19 times throughout the MHSAA girls volleyball record book. She also made Michigan's Class D all-state first team on the basketball court as both a junior and senior, averaging 18 points and 11 rebounds per game as a junior and 16 points, 10 rebounds and 3.7 blocked shots per game as a senior while leading her basketball team to Class D Quarterfinals both of those seasons.
“As our staff researched our first 50 years of female sports for our ‘Title IX at 50’ celebration during the 2021-22 school year, they told stories of several standouts who went on to collegiate, Olympic and professional stardom – and Alisha Glass stands out even among the greats,” MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said. “Taking into account everything she accomplished individually and with her teams, and not just in volleyball but basketball as well, it’s a strong argument that Alisha Glass continues to set the bar as not only our state’s best female athlete all-time, but arguably the most accomplished volleyball player in national high school history. We are thrilled that she will be inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame.”
Also during high school, Childress played on the 2004 and 2005 USA youth national volleyball teams and helped the 2004 team to the North, Central America and Caribbean Volleyball Confederation (NORECA) championship, and was named Best Server at that event. After high school, she started all four seasons at national power Penn State and set the Nittany Lions to three straight NCAA championships, being named to the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) All-America first team twice and second team once.
Childress continued her career professionally and internationally, playing professionally in the United States and Puerto Rico, Italy, Turkey, Poland and Brazil and being named USA Volleyball Indoor Female Athlete of the Year for both 2013 and 2014. She led the U.S. national team to bronze at 2016 Olympics and was named Best Setter of the tournament, after being selected as an alternate for the 2012 Olympic team.
Most recently, Childress played for the Pro Volleyball Federation's Vegas Thrill in 2024 and 2025 and played in the league's first All-Star Match last season. She’s currently the head coach of the San Diego Mojo of Major League Volleyball and last summer also completed her first season as a coach with Athletes Unlimited. She previously served as an assistant coach with the Stanford University women’s volleyball program from 2019-21 – including during the team’s run to the Division I national title in 2019 – and also served as an assistant for the gold medal-winning U.S. national team during the 2018 Pan American Cup.
Childress is the daughter of Laurie Glass, who retired from coaching Leland after the 2023 season and ranks seventh in MHSAA girls volleyball coaching history for victories with a career record of 1,259-410-124. Glass led Leland to three Class D championships and five runner-up finishes. Childress’ grandfather Larry Glass ranks on the MHSAA girls basketball coaching victory list with a 388-110 record and led Leland to three straight Class D titles from 1980-82. He also coached the Northwestern University men’s basketball team for six seasons.
Additionally, Childress is married to past Stanford basketball star Josh Childress, who went on to play eight seasons in the NBA and several more overseas. They have three daughters, Maya, Mina and Amara.
The National High School Hall of Fame was started in 1982 by the NFHS. The 12 individuals were chosen after a two-level selection process involving a screening committee composed of active high school state association administrators, coaches and officials, and a final selection committee composed of coaches, former athletes, state association officials, media representatives and educational leaders. Nominations were made through NFHS member associations. Also chosen for this class were athletes Joe Carter (Oklahoma), Jordan Larson (Nebraska), Krissy Wendell-Pohl (Minnesota) and Patrick Willis (Tennessee); sport coaches Jan Barker (Texas), David Gentry (North Carolina) and Flo Valdez (New Mexico); game officials Burney Jenkins (Kentucky) and Mary Lou Thimas (Massachusetts), former state association administrator Steve Savarese (Alabama) and former fine arts educator Craig Ihnen (Iowa).
For more on this year’s Hall of Fame class, visit the NFHS Website.