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Katie Wesseling finding a ‘new normal’ after retiring as director of Northern Kentucky Volleyball Club


By Marc Hardin
NKyTribune contributor

Katie Wesseling is enjoying her new normal. A week after retiring as 20-year director of the Northern Kentucky Volleyball Club, she spent most of Thursday with her 1-year-old grandson in and around her Villa Hills home.

“We went to church this morning. We all got haircuts. We ate some lunch and then we played some basketball with a little kiddie ball,” said Wesseling, 65. “We had a great time.”

Wesseling has three grandchildren from three boys of her own and more time than
ever to spend with them and the rest of her family now that she has reduced her role at NKYVC to an advisory one.

Katie Wesseling with husband, Tom, and granddaugter, Ellie. (Photo provided)

Wesseling is walking away on her own terms from leadership of a pet project that
turned into Northern Kentucky’s premier youth volleyball organization. She helped build the club from scratch and started with 10 girls’ teams at Silverlake Recreational Center in Erlanger and watched it grow into a 36-team outfit operating with both boys and girls out of Town & Country Athletic Center in Wilder.

NKYVC teams have won numerous age-group championships with several top-five finishes nationally and sent nearly 200 former players on to college with volleyball scholarships thanks to high-level training and national tournament exposure which put many of her K-12 players in front of college recruiters.

The club succeeded in large part because of Wesseling’s 20-year commitment and her ability to attract quality coaches.

“It’s kind of nice not having anything to worry about now,” Wesseling said of relinquishing her day-to-day club duties. “I’ll miss volleyball but I can’t do it forever.”

In 1998, Wesseling was approached to start a volleyball club for the new Silverlake center. Wesseling and Kathy Kennedy co-founded the club the next year after meeting at St. Joseph’s Elementary School in Crescent Springs where Wesseling was the athletic director after serving in a variety of roles including teacher, athletic director and state championship-winning volleyball coach at St. Henry High School.

Wesseling was looking for coaches at St. Joseph’s and she hired Kennedy, a
like-minded person who shared her passion for volleyball. Kennedy was a U.S. Army first lieutenant and coached U.S. Army European volleyball teams in West Germany among her coaching stops. Kennedy, 54 has been NKYVC’s coaching director from the beginning. She’s also retiring.

Katie Wesseling and Ellie

“I’ve been thinking about it for a year. I talked to Kathy about it and then she decided to retire. We informed everybody last weekend at the kick-off meeting,” Wesseling said.

“We’re proud of what we’ve done. I’ve handled the business side and Kathy was in charge of coaching while handling the website and marketing. She’s been absolutely wonderful. She put her heart and soul into it and had a positive influence on so many kids.”

Former Notre Dame Academy and Bellarmine University volleyball player Jill Hunt, an NKYVC coach during Wesseling and Kennedy’s entire 20-year run, is the new club director with primary duties as the coaching director. Wesseling said Town & Country will handle most of the administrative work.

“I’ve known Jill since she was a baby. She was at our wedding when she was six months old,” said Wesseling. “I know she’s going to do a great job. She knows the club front to back and has been our assistant coaching director since 2014.

She’s helped us make a lot of important decisions regarding various directions that we’ve decided to go.”

Wesseling said the NKYVC legacy she’s most proud of is its inclusiveness.

“The club is for everybody,” she said. “When we have tryouts, everybody has an opportunity to do something because we have non-traveling teams. We don’t send anybody away saying they can’t do anything. Yes, we wanted high-level players and our coaches have done an outstanding job developing them, but our top goal was to have something for everybody and we’re proud of that.”

Wesseling isn’t sure if this closes the book on her career in local athletics. She’s not really thinking that far ahead. The oldest of her grandchildren is 4 and she is looking forward to creating many memories during their formative years.

“I guess you never say never but I don’t foresee coaching (in the future),” Wesseling said. “I’ll continue to be a strong supporter of volleyball and NKYVC without worrying about what needs to be done. I’ll be enjoying time with my family.”


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One Comment

  1. Mike Due says:

    Congrats, Katie… you have worked hard, time to relax!

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