All but two of the 36 boys on Minnesota’s Lac qui Parle Valley High School volleyball team are Micronesian.
MILAN, Minn. — The Spring Lake Park boys volleyball tournament is about to begin, and the gym is packed with Minnesota high school sports powerhouses.
However, one school is not yet fully registered. above Match ticket recipients looked confused upon hearing the name “Lac qui Parle Valley”.
“What’s that?” she asked.
The ticket taker can be forgiven. As KARE 11’s Boyd Huppert reportsIn the Twin Cities metro, Lac qui Parle Valley High School is an outlier.
Over the next two days, boys from a small school near the South Dakota border will compete against a school with 10 times the enrollment. Not just this game, but almost every time they take the field.
The story begins when a Minnesota Peace Corps volunteer travels to Chuuk, one of hundreds of Pacific islands that make up the nation of Micronesia.
“He brought the first family back to Milan, Minnesota,” explained Hope Schmidt, a multilingual educator in Lac qui Parle Valley. “Family has been family ever since.”
Ready work was found in a nearby turkey processing factory – 25 years after first arriving, Micronesians now make up more than half the population of Milan, a town of 428 people that provides education for schools in the Lac qui Parle Valley.
But what does this have to do with volleyball?
“We play volleyball every day,” Lac qui Parle Valley sophomore Rson Jicko said.
Micronesians have been playing volleyball since they could walk, dating back to their days on the “Islands,” which is what Micronesians called their homeland before Milan.
“We don’t really need to teach the basics,” said Molly Hennen, Milan men’s volleyball head coach. “You can tell they’ve been playing football their whole lives.”
Between family gatherings, community picnics and impromptu games in the park, “I probably play volleyball every day,” Lac qui Parle student Thomas Emmis said.
So the timing couldn’t be better for Thomas, Rosen and the other young Micronesians. Last year, the Minnesota High School League made boys volleyball an official school sport.
“I’m really excited,” Rosen said. “Very motivated.”
The news also drew praise from Zach Stelter, athletic director at Lac qui Parle Valley High School, where nearly one-fifth of the students are Micronesian.
“We knew that if we added this feature we could engage a large percentage of kids,” the ad said.
But even he didn’t foresee what happened next.
“A lot of kids,” Zach said with a laugh.
“Thirty-four of our 36 players are Micronesian,” said men’s volleyball assistant coach Andrew Schmidt.
After two years of playing recreationally, Lac qui Parle coaches and players believe they are ready for the next step: boys volleyball at the high school level.
But coach Lark Kee Parler immediately ran into problems.
“There were zero teams within 130 miles,” Andrew said.
For the most part, college schools play men’s volleyball. Schools such as Wayzata, Lakeville North and Rogers are competing in the Spring Lake Park tournament.
Early in the morning, however, things start to heat up in the small Lac qui Parle valley next to the city and suburban schools where about 50 students graduate each year.
“When they asked, ‘Where are you from?’ I just started saying, ‘Google it,'” coach Schmidt said with a wry smile.
With no small school games, Lac que Parle Valley typically travels three hours to attend a game.
“What you see here is the bus driver,” Andrew said, glancing at his head coach.
Andrew’s wife, Hope, is a multilingual teacher at the school and streams games for parents who can’t afford travel and expensive weekends in hotels.
“Right now, we don’t have any home games, so it’s important for them to know how the team is doing,” Hope said.
She also set up online fundraiser This helps pay for long-distance travel for the kids to compete.
Genetics didn’t do Lac qui Parle’s Micronesian players any favors. Most people are short in stature, which is a handicap in sports where height has a huge advantage.
Still, in their first season, the boys from Lac qui Parle won about half of their games against schools smaller than themselves.
Coaches say they are weighing other benefits. Their men’s volleyball players’ grades and attendance rates have gone up.
Aslyn Sarber sat courtside cheering on the team. Asling lived in Milan, met her husband at the Turkey Factory and then moved to the Twin Cities.
“I’m so excited to see them, my nephews, my cousins, all the boys,” she said. “I’m very proud of them.”
Lac qui Parle’s varsity team defeated Forest Lake in straight sets but finished in the middle of the pack.
Later, no one bowed his head anymore.
“JV beat Maple Grove in the last game,” Coach Schmidt said, “and we drove out through Maple Grove and I said, ‘Look, everybody,’ and their population is about 71,000 people, and I said, ‘Milan has 400 people.'”
