Grace Lutheran, a school of 70, earns title of volleyball champion
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The East Idaho Sports team has selected a group of fall sports season award winners — players and teams of the year. The award winners will be announced, one per day, beginning with Grace Lutheran, the girls fall team of the year.
POCATELLO — Ask the residents of the Pocatello-Chubbuck area how many high schools are in town, and most will tell you three.
But nestled in the Highland hills, small enough to hide behind the Mountain View Event Center, is a fourth: Grace Lutheran.
Few know about the school because its tiny stature — especially when compared to nearby Highland High School. There are just 70 high school students enrolled at Grace Lutheran, yet still the school was able to construct a state champion volleyball team.
The Royals dominated their way through the 1A Volleyball State Championship bracket, beating three-time reigning champ Horseshoe Bend twice in the tournament.
Principal Hanne Krause was an athlete in high school, and has spent years as a coach and educator. This was the first banner-raising she has been a part of, so she is working to impress upon the student-athlete how massive an accomplishment they have achieved.
Athletic Director Jeremy Hess has tried to do the same. He called the championship run “pretty awesome.”
“A lot of things can go wrong, injuries and everything else, when you only have eight kids. For it all to come together like it did was pretty amazing,” he said, noting that he waited all season for the toll of playing with a short bench to derail the championship chase. “But the girls just met the challenge every single time. It really was a magical run.”
Ashleigh Sayer-Frederick, the school’s head volleyball coach and kindergarten teacher — because, as Krause said, everyone at the tiny school wears multiple hats — said she knew before the season started that this team was capable of raising the banner.
“To be honest, last year,” she said when asked when she thought it was a real possibility
All three school officials offered a similar take on the last two seasons of Royal volleyball. Last regular season was perfect, they said, but this year’s tournament was even better.
Grace Lutheran went 21-0 in the 2023 regular season, but suffered its first loss of the year in the state tournament, finishing third.
This time around, they suffered a few regular season losses, including two to conference foes, but they were as perfect as is possible in the tourney run. Not only did they go 5-0 — including a play-in win to qualify — they never dropped a set.
And in the final set of the year, No. 3 of the 1A title match, they came back from a 23-18 deficit, finishing their magical run with a seven-point run to capture the blue trophy.
Sayer-Frederick was anxious, she admitted, but she wasn’t nervous when trailing late in the set. But, with her short bench, she knew the girls’ best chance was to finish without needing a fourth or fifth set, and definitely to avoid another match.
“I pulled them in and said, ‘we don’t want to go to four,'” she said of a timeout she called before the run. “And it wasn’t ego thing — like I wanted us to do what we did — it was more of just, I knew they were tired so I knew that going to four would not be in our favor. … It was time to take care of business. … It almost felt like a dream. … I just had this weird feeling, like, ‘we’re going to get it.'”
The team had just three seniors. Two of them played especially large roles during the run.
Lily Perry, the primary setter, was at the service line for the run. And her jump serve was true to the target zone six times in a row despite her needing to sprint to the net to put up a block, then drop back to play second ball.
After the run, Sayer-Frederick told Perry that she had “ice in her veins.”
Kirsten Krause, the secondary setter along with being the middle blocker and primary attacker, joined Perry in sprinting all over the court during the run.
Sayer-Frederick likened their actions to a football team’s quarterback who also plays middle linebacker, tasked with commanding both units while contributing to every play with nothing resembling a mental or physical break.
Seniors Krause and Perry are joined by Samantha Moretti as the outgoing class. And without a freshman or JV team to pull from, Grace Lutheran will rely on additions from current eight-graders joining the squad next season.
The good news, according to the school’s principal and mother to two of its volleyball players, is the interest this championship run gained among the young students.
“We have 2-year-olds through 18-year-olds on the campus,” Krause said. “To see the whole school community, and church community, get behind this team, and really support them and have fun watching them throughout this season, was really cool.”
The goal, Sayer-Frederick added, is to continue building intrigue and recruitment, until Grace Lutheran is to 1A volleyball what Madison High School is to 6A.
“Three years ago actually, I said to the kids, ‘I want this to be the volleyball school,” the coach said. “I want us to be the school where people know, if you’re serious about volleyball and you live in Pocatello and want to go play, it’s a program that’s committed to winning.'”
They achieved that lofty goal this year, and have already targeted a run at doing the same next year.
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