Once a Panther, again a Panther

Sometimes asking a new coach about her coaching and/or playing background turns into an old home week of sorts.

Cynthia Beyer, the new head volleyball coach at the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy, graduated from Mead High in Spokane in 1975.

That was two years before I did.

Panther Power!

THAT WAS followed by the usual exchange of “who do you remember from my grade” and, as you might expect, we both knew some of the same people from each of our grades, though we were two years apart.

Cindy Wakefield played volleyball (and basketball) at Mead. One of her first club coaches in Spokane was Bill Neville, who went on to coach at Montana State and the University of Washington, among other places, and also coached in the Summer Olympics.

Her high school volleyball career coincided with the start of Title IX. One year when her Mead volleyball team qualified for state, the baseball coach felt sorry for them because they didn’t have real volleyball uniforms. So he gave them some baseball jerseys to wear at state. Prior to that, she said, the girls used athletic tape to put numbers on their P.E. shirts to wear during matches.

“Sometimes I look at the girls (today) and want to say, ‘You have no idea what we went through,’” Beyer said.

Before her senior year, she said, the volleyball coach had resigned. And at that time, there weren’t a lot of teachers with volleyball knowledge walking around campus. She and another player convinced the French teacher to become the volleyball coach — even though the teacher knew nothing about volleyball.

“Don’t worry,” Wakefield told her. “Lisa and I will coach the team.”

That was probably more common than you might think back in those days.

I DON’T remember those parts of Cindy’s/Cynthia’s story. But I do remember Mead playing its varsity volleyball matches in the afternoons in those days. I believe they had advanced past the stage of rolling out the volleyball standards where the net posts were attached to tires — an outside hitter’s nightmare.

Wakefield went on to play volleyball at Spokane Falls Community College for Mary Jo (Tracy) Lambert, who would later coach volleyball at Sandpoint High in the early 1990s with her husband, Art. Wakefield also played one summer on a USA junior national volleyball team.

Fast-forward a few years.

Cynthia Beyer has coached volleyball for nearly three decades, mostly in Spokane and North Idaho.

For the past decade, she has been an assistant coach at Timberlake, where her daughter, Corina, starred a few years back.

In the most recent offseason, the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy coaching job came open.

“Somebody asked me if I wanted the job and I said ‘no,’” Beyer said. “Then they asked again and I said, ‘Why not?’”

Beyer said she plans to continue as a health/P.E. teacher at Timberlake High.

“I guess I was just ready for something different,” she said of the coaching move.

If nothing else, her current group of Panther volleyball players can be assured of being coached by someone with extensive volleyball knowledge.

And, unlike she and her Panther teammates from high school, they won’t have to tape numbers on their P.E. shirts before they take the court.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.