For the first time in school history, Bellevue will be starting volleyball practices next week.
Picked to lead the Lady Eagles into a new sport is Mollee Kirk, a 22-year-old 2019 graduate from Windthorst who got both her bachelor’s and master’s in business administration at Texas Tech University in four years.
She also was helping coach during her time at college at Lubbock’s Southcrest Christian School and had most recently coached her sister’s club team.
Despite that time put in, Kirk was not initially planning to pursue coaching and was instead working as an area manager at Amazon this spring before she was contacted by Bellevue, on a tip from one of her old coaches at Windthorst, to talk about its new volleyball program.
“I didn’t realize it was going to be an interview, but it was,” Kirk said. “They said they would get back with me in a couple of weeks and two days later they offered the job.”
After thinking it over for a time, Kirk accepted knowing she could have more of an impact on young girl’s lives than if she stayed on at Amazon.
Kirk was a multi-sport athlete at Windthorst, but her main sport and passion she poured 10 years into was volleyball. She was a middle-blocker who was named to the Texas Sports Writers Association all-state third team and the Texas Girls Coaches Association all-state first team in both her junior and senior seasons.
That playing experience along with the coaching experience she got in college will be needed as Bellevue is starting from the beginning as only a couple of girls in the program have played the sport at all.
“They are super eager and excited to learn,” Kirk said. “They listen whenever I give them critiques. They are excited for this new sport. The good thing about it is most of the girls are younger, like freshman or sophomores, so we will be able to build it so that in a couple of years when they are upperclassmen we can compete.”

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