Bedford North Lawrence volleyball program has new caretaker in charge

BEDFORD — For the second time in three years, Bedford North Lawrence has committed its volleyball program to the caring hands of a former player. This time it is ex-volleyball player, ex-softball pitching star, and ex-volleyball assistant coach Whitney (Raines) Carroll who has taken charge of a team that has seen its share of struggles in recent seasons.

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The 30-year old Carroll, who is also an assistant coach now with BNL's heralded softball team, takes over for Gabrielle Arthur, who stepped aside following the 2021-22 season and is now forming wedding plans after recently getting engaged.

Carroll is a lifelong Bedford resident other than a two-year stint at Indiana University Southeast after graduating from BNL in 2010. She is tasked with redirecting a program that has won four or few matches in three of the last four seasons.

Carroll played a season of softball for the Grenadiers and stayed in school another year to focus on academics as an elementary education major. She departed New Albany in 2012, though not with a degree but with a future husband named Nick Carroll.

The young couple would eventually start a family — daughters Norah and Wren are 5-years old and 1-year old, respectively — but had a few things to do first.

Carroll a coach at heart

Carroll relocated back to Bedford and joined the school corporation as a secretary, but the embers of leadership had already been stoked.

"I started coaching coaching volleyball at the Girls Club right away when I got back," Whitney recalled. "But I had already started helping Brad (Gilbert, BNL softball's head coach) when I was still in college.

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"I didn't really know when I was that young what I was going to do, but I loved helping kids, so I would drive back home and give pitching lessons when I was 18  and 19, and that planted the seed for coaching right then.

"I continued to work with the young greats in Bedford like Zoe Adams, and then girls like Annie (Waggoner) and Aliza (Jewell) who are on the team now. To watch them grow and do so well and be a part of their progress is just amazing.

"And Scott (Saunders, her high school volleyball coach) got me into club volleyball coaching at about that time and it was really enjoyable. It all definitely confirmed to me that I wanted to be a coach.

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"I was the assistant/JV volleyball coach to Jordan (Robbins) in 2018 and 2019. I think I learned a lot during that time, and this year with the softball team was an amazing experience.

"So I'm obviously very excited about getting this job as the volleyball coach."

Shaping quality players, persons

Carroll's philosophy is abundantly clear, and that is she is going to focus on developing the kids first as quality people and then as quality players while believing that they will eventually coincide and certainly can coexist.

"Communication, I think, is one of my strong suits, and we are going to talk a lot and convey what we want and expect from our players," she said. "I'm all about teaching and we will have certain core values that we want to share as teammates. I'm also all about teaching the fundamentals of the game.

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"We have to learn to be great young ladies, good kids and students who are respectful of their school, community and each other. Once you have that and you continue working hard on the floor to improve your fundamentals then winning is the result.

"We have a lot to learn and a lot to work on, so it may take some time, but I know that having great core values and winning games can go hand in hand. I've seen it under Scott, and getting to learn under Brad and thrive this season with softball shows it.

"We're going to try to build that kind of family atmosphere here with these girls in the volleyball program."

Coach thrilled about her staff

Carroll feels she is going to have great help in her endeavor. McKenna (Conrad) Bowsher is her varsity assistant, Jennifer (Roach) Quast is the head JV coach, with Sydney Webb and Megan (Ruble) Baldwin also serving as assistants.

"McKenna has the same core values as me, and she is my right hand in all this," Carroll said. "We played together for Scott, so she knows what he expected and knows what we expect. Jennifer is going to do a great job with the JV, and I'm so happy to have Sydney and Megan with us.

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"There's a new standard set and we're going to work as hard as we can to instill it and carry it through. It's going to be based on a lot of communication with the players. We're not going to run laps or be punished for every mistake. We're going to talk about it, discuss what needs to happen, and then go out and try to make sure it doesn't keep happening."

The Stars also have a strength coach leading their conditioning in Lauren Powell, who has been a physical trainer at IU, Kansas and the University of New Orleans and is nearing her PhD in Health & Human Performance. She has her Masters and Bachelors degrees in Kinesiology and Exercise Science from IU.

"Lauren is amazing and she's going to help our kids so much," Carroll. "She really knows what it takes to get into shape and become an athlete. She and I played travel volleyball together for her dad, Eric Powell, so she knows the sport and what kind of training our kids need."

Hitting the ground digging

Carroll and her coaches have hit the ground digging. And spiking and serving and setting during her first BNL Stars Camps, which started this week with elementary school kids.

The middle school camp is set for Wednesday, June 22 through Friday, June 24 from 9 a.m. to noon., and the high school camp will be Tuesday, June 28 through Thursday, June 30 from 9 a.m. to noon.

The turnout for the camp has been very promising.

"We have over 90 girls signed up for all three sessions, so that's pretty exciting," Carroll noted. "We had 50 elementary kids, and we have 30 middle school girls, and then right around 20 high school kids.

"We're learning techniques, showing them all of the fundamentals of the game, and we have discussion groups and talk about things that will help them in life as well as volleyball.

"It has been a blast so far with the little girls, and my high school kids have done an incredible job of teaching them. I'm so proud of them."

Special motivation to succeed

When Whitney and Nick were very young club coaches, they used to provide their teams with a special motivation to be successful. The players were promised to see a back-flip from Nick (who was a soccer star at Southwestern High School in Hanover) each time they won a match.

Now, it's uncertain if that tradition is going to carry over at age 30, but one thing that won't change is Carroll's motivation for seeing her kids succeed.

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"Nick was a great athlete and he used to do that back-flip with no problem," Carroll said. "I bet if he was asked he'd say he could still do it, but I'm going to say we have young kids now and maybe we better not try it being 30-years old.

"Our ambition is still great, but I'm not sure where back-flips fit into the picture anymore. But the important thing about coaching for me goes beyond winning. Certainly we want to do our share of that and build our way into a great program.

"But it's about the relationships you build, and instilling those core values they can take with them the rest of their lives and become amazing human beings."

Contact Times-Mail Sports Writer Jeff Bartlett at jeffb@tmnews.com, or on Twitter @jeffbtmnews.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Mail: Bedford NL installs new leader of volleyball program for 2022-23