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STEPPING AWAY: After 19 seasons as head volleyball coach, Sikeston’s Steve Beydler retires
SIKESTON — Since the start of the program in 1975, Janie Merrick and Steve Beydler have been the only two head coaches of the Sikeston volleyball team.
In 2019, the Lady Bulldogs will be welcoming in its third head coach, after Beydler announced his retirement in November.
Beydler — who has been the head coach for the past 19 years — has been through the ups and the downs. Likewise, he also been through a lot of change, not only within the school and his staff but the sport as a whole.
Nine assistant coaches have come and gone, since Beydler began, including three former players.
Through the years, Beydler has had to adapt and build bonds not only with his assistant coaches but also adjust to the ever-changing game of volleyball also.
“You know, we changed from side-out volleyball to rally scoring,” Beydler said. “Of course, that moved from 15-25 per set. There was even a time when they quit calling them sets, and they started calling them games, and now they’ve gone back down to sets. The libero has been implemented now, which changed the game a lot, and then the libero became allowed to serve — which originally they weren’t allowed to do. So, there’s been changes along the way.
“The whole point of the changes being made in the last few years is the fact that they want the game to be more spectator-friendly and to move along quicker. That was the gripe that most people had about volleyball was they would serve, someone would mess up, it’d be over, and then you sit for 10-15 seconds, so they got the ball back to the girl to serve again. They’re trying to up the pace, and they’re still doing that today, they’re thinking about getting rid of the two-hit rule because it doesn’t really help someone by having two hits; it doesn’t give anybody an advantage.”
Coming into his first stint at Sikeston, Beydler took over a program that was ready to take the next step.
Merrick — who started the program — left Beydler with a class that was ready to win, and coming in, he had some experience coaching the sport and playing it, but was shocked when the school asked him to take the reigns.
“I had some experience with volleyball,” Beydler said. “I played club volleyball at the University of Maryland back in the day, and I played a lot of volleyball; I coached some teams but not at this level. So, about a month later, they call me in and said ‘Hey, we’d like you to be the head coach,’ and I was like ‘Wow, that’s not exactly what I was thinking,’ but that ended up being what happened. In that first year, I had a group of seniors who were really hungry. They thought they might have a good chance of a district championship the year before. They were really hungry to do well, and we went 23-7 that year.”
Missouri State High School Activities Association’s website only dates its volleyball records back to the 2009 season, with Beydler’s first season being the best to date.
His 2011 team was the closest to reach the wins mark he set in 1999, as his team finished 20-17 that season.
Winners of five conference championships under Beydler’s tutelage, the Lady Bulldogs won four consecutive conference crowns from 2009-2012 to go along with the one they had from 2007, he still wishes one of his teams would have captured a district title. Having to face the likes of Jackson and Farmington made it very difficult to accomplish that from year-to-year, though.
“It’s been a struggle trying to beat those teams,” Beydler said. “One of the problems we have with Farmington is that we never see them unless we play them in districts. They are not on our regular season schedule. Jackson, we sometimes see 2-3 times a year because they’re in the same conference, we play them in the regular season, and we might see them in a tournament. My first season when we went 23-7, three of my losses that year were to Jackson. They always have really big, strong, good athletes in their school. So, that was kind of a struggle. Both of those programs have always been strong. I think they have a lot of girls who play club ball and that is something that Sikeston is starting to see more. You know, a lot of our athletes don’t have time to play club, because they play other sports.”
The volleyball program only has one district championship to date — 1987 — and have a total of 10 conference championships, with the other five coming from 1986-1987 and 1990-1992.
Stepping away from the sport has been in the back of Beydler’s mind for a couple of years, but the want and desire to coach one specific athlete or athletes made it harder for him to shut the door.
“I just kept coming back because there always seems to be an athlete that’s almost here that I like to finish it with, and you can’t do that,” Beydler said. “There’s always good athletes in the pipe. I think our group that’s coming is going to eventually improve to the point that they can see some success. Next year, new coach and a new way of running things, it kind of depends on who they get.”
Throughout the years, progressing players was not only a blessing but was also a burden, which Beydler said was frustrating at times.
Not only has he spent 19 years at the high school, but 16 years coaching at Sikeston Junior High School as well.
Leaving the program at where it is now, he believes that volleyball is progressing forward, but becomes harder with girls becoming multiple-sport athletes. Beydler also added that his time, early on, coaching at the YMCA and with summer camps was meant to helper younger girls become more adaptive to the game.
“I don’t really know before I came what was done in the offseason,” said Beydler on the state of volleyball in the area. “We have camps every summer where we can get down to the young ages. In the beginning, when I was first a coach, I helped out at the YMCA a lot. We tried to create an environment at the YMCA that was similar to what they might see as we got older and progressed. We can have girls as young as fifth-sixth grade who come to our camps in the summer, and now of course, since we have a junior high program, they can feed into that somewhat, but it’s difficult when these girls have all been in dance and gymnastics and are already heading toward cheerleading, before they can ever play volleyball. We have a lot of girls who play softball. So, there are some choices for them to make by the time they get to high school. Developing young players is fun, but also is a little frustrating at times.”