All but two of the 36 boys on the Lac qui Parle Valley High School volleyball team in Minnesota are Micronesian.
MILAN, Minnesota — The gyms are packed with Minnesota high school sports powerhouses as the Spring Lake Park boys volleyball tournament gets underway.
Yet, one school doesn’t quite register. Upon hearing the name “Lac qui Parle Valley,” the tournament ticket taker looks puzzled.
“What is that?” she asks.
The ticket taker can be forgiven. As KARE 11’s Boyd Huppert reports, in the Twin Cities metro, Lac qui Parle Valley High School is an outlier.
During the next two days, the boys from the small school near the South Dakota border will play schools 10 times their enrollment. And not just this tournament, but nearly every time they take the court.
So, what gives?
The story starts with a Minnesota Peace Corps volunteer who traveled to Chuuk, one of the hundreds of Pacific islands that make up the nation of Micronesia.
“He brought a first family back to Milan, Minnesota,” Hope Schmidt, a multi-language educator at Lac qui Parle Valley, explains. “And from that, family followed family.”
Finding ready work at a nearby turkey plant — 25 years after first arriving — Micronesians now make up more than half the population of Milan, a town of 428 that feeds into Lac qui Parle Valley schools.
But what does any of this have to do with volleyball?
“We just play volleyball every day,” Rson Jicko, a Lac qui Parle Valley sophomore, says.
From the time they can walk, Micronesians have always played volleyball, dating back to their days on “the islands,” as Micronesians refer to their home before Milan.
“We don’t really have to teach basics,” says Molly Hennen, Milan’s head boys volleyball coach. “You can just tell they’ve played all their life.”
Between family gatherings, community picnics, and pick-up games in the park, “I play volleyball probably every single day,” Thomas Emmis, a Lac qui Parle student, says.
So, for Thomas, Rson, and other young Micronesians, the timing couldn’t have been better. Last year, the Minnesota State High School League made boys volleyball an official school sport.
“I was really excited,” Rson says. “Very pumped.”
The news was also well received by Zach Stelter, the athletic director at Lac qui Parle Valley High School, where nearly one of every five students is Micronesian.
“We knew we could get a large chunk of our kids participating in this if we add this,” the AD says.
But even he didn’t foresee what happened next.
“A lot of kids,” Zach says with a smile.
And not just any kids.
“Thirty-four of 36 are Micronesian on our team,” assistant boys volleyball coach Andrew Schmidt says.
After two years of recreational play, Lac qui Parle’s coaches and players believed they were ready for the next step: boys volleyball at the high school level.
But Lac qui Parle’s coaches immediately ran into a problem.
“There’s zero teams within 130 miles,” Andrew says.
For the most part, big schools play boys volleyball. Schools like Wayzata, Lakeville North, and Rogers are participating in the Spring Lake Park tournament.
Yet, at the start of the morning, warming up next to urban and suburban schools, is little Lac qui Parle Valley, graduating about 50 students per year.
“When they ask, ‘Where are you from?’ I’ve just started saying, ‘Google it,’” coach Schmidt says with a wry smile.
With no small school competition, Lac que Parle Valley routinely travels three hours for games.
“You’re looking at the bus drivers here,” Andrew says, glancing at his head coach.
Andrew’s wife, Hope, the multilingual teacher at the school, livestreams games for parents who can’t afford travel and a costly weekend in a hotel.
“At this point, we don’t have any home matches, so this is important that we keep them looped in on how the team’s doing,” Hope says.
She also set up the online fundraiser that helps pay for the boys’ lengthy road trips for games.
Genetics has done Lac qui Parle’s Micronesian players no favors. Most are small in stature, a handicap in a sport where height holds massive advantages.
Still, in their inaugural season, the boys from Lac qui Parle have won roughly half their matches against schools that dwarf theirs in size.
Coaches say they are measuring other benefits. Already, both grades and attendance are up among their boys volleyball players.
Seated courtside at the tournament, Aslyn Sarber cheers on the team. Aslyn lived in Milan, met her husband at the turkey plant, and moved to the Twin Cities.
“I’m just so glad that I can see them, my nephews, and cousins, and all them boys,” she says. “I’m very proud of them.”
The Lac qui Parle varsity team beat Forest Lake in two straight sets, but finished the tournament in the middle of the pack.
Afterward, no heads were hanging.
“JV beat Maple Grove at this last tournament,” Coach Schmidt says, “and we drove through Maple Grove leaving, and I said, ‘Everybody look,’ and their population was like 71,000, and I said, ‘Milan is 400.’”