A Decade of Dominance

This story took first place for enterprise story in the 2011 Minnesota Associated Press Sports Asssociation Awards for dailies under 20,000.

On the morning of Oct. 5, 2000, it rained. Not a storm, but enough to leave the parking lot outside Van Orsow Auditorium glistening under the feet of the Cardinal faithful as they filed in under an overcast sky that evening.

In every sense, it was an average fall day. The trees lining Third Avenue were alight in their gorgeous medley of pigmentation. The familiar rhythms of a volleyball match filled the gymnasium. The crowd was joyous, the band played and the students prayed.

It would be at least another year before anyone thought about that night again; before anyone realized its importance.

But with each passing fall, with each win the Bethlehem Academy volleyball team collects and stores away in its jar of excellence, that day grows in magnitude.

On that night the Cardinals failed. It hasn’t happened since.

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On what should have been a banal evening, a pair of freshmen and a pair of twins took the court. The starting lineup — freshmen Betty Slinger and Anne Carpentier, twins Carrie and Cassie Gillen, Laura Thibault and Tianna Trnka — was on its way to a 21-7 season, what would be Bethlehem Academy’s sixth straight season with at least 18 wins. Coming off the bench were eighth-graders Erika Kriechbaum, Marissa Valentyn and Bethany Boelter.

It’s hard to imagine a story about Cardinal volleyball starting with a loss, but that’s what happened. Visiting New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva won a hard-fought 3-2 victory.

Five nights later those same starters came back, the same girls popped off the bench and the Cardinals won, beating Waterville-Elysian-Morristown 3-1 on Oct. 10, 2000.

Fast-forward now, like a character in a movie who has awoken from a long slumber and is forced to watch a decade’s worth of history in terrifying triple-speed. President George W. Bush is elected, the United States is attacked, an eight-year war in Iraq topples a regime, New Orleans is ravaged then rebuilds after Hurricane Katrina, Facebook and YouTube are invented and change how people interact. Suddenly, it’s December 2011. Ever since that cool evening in 2000, the Cardinals have not lost a Gopher Conference match, a 99-match winning streak that spans more than 10 seasons.

In the last five years, BA has lost just one set, in a 3-1 win over United South Central in 2009. Along the way the Cardinals won five state championships in nine years, and were state runners-up four times, reaching a record nine straight Class A championships.

“It’s amazing what they’ve done,” says longtime Mabel-Canton coach Lonnie Morken, who has lost six times in the Section 1A championship to BA and has known BA coach Franz Boelter for 15 years. “It’s stuff we would like to duplicate. It’s not luck. It’s hard work.”

How does a small Catholic school of the Sinsinawan Dominican Tradition, with an enrollment of just under 200, become such a consistent colossus? Is it the players? The coach? The system?

BOOK 1: GENESIS

“I just didn’t know much about volleyball.” — Franz Boelter

On a hot July day in 1992 Franz Boelter was finishing his basement when the phone rang. On the other end was Ron Thibault, BA’s athletic director and dean of students. Boelter had arrived at BA in 1984 after six years coaching and teaching in Medford. When he first donned the Cardinal red, Boelter coached B squad volleyball, despite a distinct lack of experience.

“The first volleyball match I ever saw was the first one I coached,” Boelter says.

After two years, Boelter stepped away from volleyball, focusing on building the Cardinals boys basketball program, then Thibault called looking for someone to succeed volleyball coach Genni Steele and lead an up-and-down program that had just two conference championships and no division titles (the precursor to sections) in 15 seasons of play.

“Why don’t you coach volleyball?” Thibault asked over the crackling phone line.

“I don’t know enough about volleyball.”

“Well, your teams always win.”

Despite his lack of volleyball knowledge, Boelter had won a pair of B squad titles before leaving the game for six years. He walked upstairs, preparing to allow his wife to shoot down the preposterous idea with a roll of her eyes.

“I think that would be a really good idea,” Cynthia Boelter said. “You’re in the gym with (your sons) Grant and Brett all the time, and (your daughter) Bethany is 5 now and that would give you something to do in the gym with her.”

Years later, all Franz can say is, “It wasn’t quite the answer I was looking for.”

Boelter informed Thibault he wanted to take the job, but the cautious AD had one final question.

“If you did this, is this just a two-year deal and then you’re done?”

“No,” Boelter responded. “If I take it, I’m going to run it just like I do the basketball program. I’ll have the same expectations I do for the boys in basketball. So one of two things will happen: Either the program is going to get better or I’m going to run it into the ground.”

BOOK 2: CREATION

“It just didn’t happen overnight.” — Franz Boelter

So Boelter took over the volleyball program, with mixed results at first. In 1992, the team went 17-3-1, a seven-win improvement from the year before.

During those early years, Boelter’s challenge was to convince the girls that they were true athletes, not just girls participating in sports. The girls would complain that they didn’t draw crowds like the football or boys basketball teams did. But at the same time, the girls would ask out of practice on a Friday if the football team was playing.

“I guarantee they wouldn’t do the same thing in return,” Boelter told his players. “You have to start thinking of yourself with the same level of importance as they think of themselves.”

At the time, the stands at Van Orsow Auditorium weren’t always brimming like Lake Faribault in the spring. But on the final regular-season night of the 1992 season, BA was hosting Alden-Conger. A win would give BA a share of its first Gopher title since 1984, and a loss would drop it to second. After winning 16 matches in 20 tries already, the local sporting populace had taken notice and packed the stands. The atmosphere was addictive. BA won a close, exciting match and earned the third Gopher title in school history. In one swift season the BA volleyball team had stirred the interest of the community and beckoned a new era of Cardinal volleyball.

But in 1993 it was back to 12-11-1 and in 1994 the Cardinals finished 9-15-1, the only losing season in Boelter’s 20 years as head coach. A level of excitement still permeated from the youthful spirit of that 1994 squad; a hungry collection of young women who would soon form the foundation for the Cardinals’ success to come.

“It was kind of fun because Franz had found a core group of girls that were committed to the program and developing the program,” says Abbey Samargia, who played from 1994-98 and is now an assistant coach.

That year the team’s Jana Minnick Pasta award winner for hustle was freshman Nicole Trnka, whose father, Ken, would become a vital cog in the Cardinal volleyball factory starting the next year. Nicole went on to play at St. Olaf for four years and is now the head coach at the College of St. Benedict.

Ken Trnka had been playing volleyball since high school and was friends with Boelter. After a stilted earlier attempt at a Junior Olympic program, Trnka and Boelter decided they needed to create a youth program that would foster generations of athletes and teach them the Cardinal system.

Which brings us to the first reason the Cardinals have rolled off 14 of the last 16 Gopher titles.

BOOK 3: JO

“Getting in the program right away and learning the rotation as early as we did really helped set us up for the future.” — Jena Budde

Rome wasn’t built in a day and volleyball skills aren’t taught in a three-month season. In his book “Outliers” sociologist and journalist Malcolm Gladwell writes about the 10,000-hour rule, originally proffered by Swedish psychologist Anders Eriksson. The theory boils down to a simple equation: It takes 10,000 hours of experience, or practice, at something for it to become second-nature, a natural extension of your body’s regular process. Examples include The Beatles performing live in Hamburg, Germany, more than 1,200 times in a four-year stretch and Bill Gates spending more than 10,000 hours programming on a computer he gained access to at an elite private school in 1968.

“No one — not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone,” writes Gladwell.

To that end, Trnka offered his services to create a competitive JO program. In the spring of 1995 they started a U-18 team. The next year, a U-16 team was added and soon the program carried BA athletes from fifth grade through their high school careers.

“That’s vital,” says Samargia, who was a member of the pioneer U-18 team. “I think that’s why we’ve had girls in seventh, eighth or ninth grade contribute at the varsity level.”

One of the keys to the BA JO program is its small size. Most youth programs act like a Christmas tree, with a broad base filled with dozens of fifth graders spread out over several teams. As the girls advance, those many teams are whittled to a few and the funnel pours out a team of varsity players at its tip. But with BA — although now there are a pair of teams at the youngest ages — the girls spend their entire athletic careers playing alongside the same teammates.

“That kind of set us apart,” says Beth Hanson, who played on state championship teams in 2003 and 2005, went on to become the all-time assist leader at St. Benedict and is now in her second year as head coach at West Central Area High School. “It’s nice to develop that chemistry and know where everyone is going to be on the court. I played with Mary (Slinger) every year and we knew where we would be on the court.”

“In volleyball communication is such a big factor and there are times when the communication breaks down in a loud gym,” says Bethany Boelter, a member of the first state championship team in 2003 who went on to play at Minnesota State, Mankato and North Dakota State. “Knowing the people next to you and how they play helps tremendously.”

Continuity, which is antithesis to a high school program where players graduate every year, not only comes from the girls’ on-court familiarity, but from their comfort with the basics of Boelter’s system. At first, Boelter coached the youngest team himself to ensure he wouldn’t have to un-teach anything later on. He has since relinquished coaching duties, but still administers the program. He makes sure to take in a game at every grade level to keep tabs on future players and runs the summer volleyball camps, which have outpaced his basketball camps in popularity.

“Not much changes as they come up,” Boelter says. “The system stays the same. They’re just developing skills. I don’t care what the sport is, it’s all about fundamentals and chemistry.”

BOOK 4: LA FAMILIA

“It’s just the strongest community of people who wholeheartedly believe in each other.” — Beth Hanson

A team is a family. It is an analogy as tired and overused as saying a game is like a battle, or a season like a war. But despite its weathered entrance into the domain of cliché, a tight bond between teammates is vital to the success of the group. Chemistry can turn a team of misfits and journeymen into champions, like when the New England Patriots asked to be introduced as a team before Super Bowl XXXVI, then promptly shocked the heavily favored St. Louis Rams. It can also cripple a talented squad, like the 2004 Los Angeles Lakers and their four future Hall of Famers disintegrating against a Detroit Pistons team with just one All-Star.

The Cardinals have always enjoyed chemistry in excess. That’s not by accident.

“We’ve always tried to run the program more as a family thing,” says Trnka. “I think when I first started coaching it was like the kids were against the coaching staff. We finally managed to convince them we are in this together.”

“I think that was one of the biggest reasons for our success,” says Laura Slinger, a middle hitter on the 2005 and 2007 championship teams who started playing JO in fifth grade and went on to play at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. “Not only do we want ourselves to do well, but we want our teammates to do well, too.”

How does that team atmosphere develop? It certainly helps to be in a small school where the girls share classes, lunch tables and brief hallway fits of levity. But it also comes from the team-building exercises outside of school that have been nurtured and encouraged by Boelter and his coaching staff.

“They are very tight-knit, almost family-like,” Morken says. “For the most part, that would be unheard of at other schools.”

A staple of BA volleyball life is the annual preseason sleepover, which got its inauspicious start in 2001 when Bethany Boelter was a freshman.

“This is a funny story,” Bethany starts. The legend goes that the girls — including Laura Thibault, Erika Kriechbaum and Cassie and Carrie Gillen — were preparing to perform a Spice Girls song and dance at an upcoming pepfest. With so much choreography and costume work to be done, they decided to have a sleepover to make tie-dye T-shirts. They put up tents in Thibault’s yard and the tradition began. The next year they moved the sleepover to the preseason and switched locations to the Budde family cabin in Paynesville.

“It really helped break down walls people would have,” Slinger said. “It was just a blast. We would do the craziest things together.”

During Slinger’s senior year in 2007 the girls swarmed Faribault for a scavenger hunt, and one of the objectives was to count the ceramic frogs in the Boelters’ rock garden (Boelter is an avid gardener and has seven rock gardens in his yard). The girls were inspired to kidnap one of the frogs, then wrote out a ransom note with a picture of the frog with a blindfold on, left it on the porch and escaped into the night. The ceramic frog quickly took on a life of its own; Boelter made up a long sleeve T-shirt with three other frogs on it that said “Bring back our Brother.” But the frog stayed hidden away until the team clinched its spot at the state tournament. When the Cardinals won their section, they brought out the frog and returned it to Boelter.

“He was so happy,” Slinger remembers. “He was proud of us. That was the symbol of the team.”

In its strange nonsequitor way, the frog still holds resonance in the program. Just this fall, after the 2011 team returned from winning its state title, the girls returned a ceramic turtle (there were no frogs in the garden this year) to Boelter at the team’s welcome home banquet.

“The chemistry and the team building that he promotes, that’s what I preach to my girls when I coach, too,” Bethany Boelter says. “You don’t think it makes a difference, but it does. It’s something you can’t teach or coach. You can’t force it, but it gives you such a competitive edge.”

At times, the team-building exercises would go beyond camaraderie and friendships. During a family vacation to Door County, Wisc., when Bethany was in eighth grade, the family, along with Kriechbaum, stopped at a park overlooking Lake Michigan. Below a rock wall, Boelter spotted a large, white stone.

“Geez, I’d love to have that rock for my rock garden,” he muttered. So the three of them pushed and pulled and grunted and managed to move the boulder slightly, but not enough to get it to the car. Finally, Cynthia Boelter convinced them to give up. But Boelter didn’t forget about that rock.

“Someday we’ll come back and get it,” he said.

Four years later the Cardinals took a team trip to watch Betty Slinger play as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. When Boelter realized they would be just an hour from Door County, he went up to Bethany’s room, where she sat with Kriechbaum.

“All of a sudden all the lights went on at the same time,” Boelter says.

The Boelters packed their van with a tarp and rope. When they reached the beach Kriechbaum leapt from the car, sprinted to the precipice and looked down. She saw the rock and lifted her arms in the air like Rocky. It took 10 people to roll the rock onto the tarp and lift it into a waiting van. The moment made it onto the team’s highlight video.

“Most of their favorite memories are memories that are not on the court,” assistant coach Abbey Samargia says.

Book 5: Competition and Scouting

“I don’t think people realize how much time Franz and (assistant coach) Sue (Jandro) put into the program. There is so much behind the scenes that fans and family don’t see.” — Abbey Samargia

Another entry in the file of weary sports sayings is that to be your the best, you have to beat the best. But again, despite its overuse, the phrase is built on a foundation of truth. One of Boelter’s self-proclaimed successes — he allows himself very few — has been wedging BA into some of the state’s largest tournaments, as well as convincing Class AAA powerhouses Lakeville North and Owatonna to play it every year.

“BA plays the toughest schedule there is in Class A,” Morken says.

It started years ago when Boelter began befriending coaches across the state and managed to gain entrance into the third, and lowest, tier of the Apple Valley Tournament.

“I had to knock on the door for awhile,” Boelter says.

Soon, the Cardinals were moved up to the second tier and then the top echelon of the tournament. Now they play in the Shakopee and Chaska tournaments as well, widely regarded as some of the most competitive high school volleyball in the state.

“I knew that in order to get better we had to challenge ourselves with teams that we couldn’t beat in order to raise our level of play,” Boelter says.

The downside of playing elite competition is losing too often. While some failure can be a motivational tool, losing can quickly cross that line into demoralization and doubt. The key is not just to play top competition, but have the tools to beat it. That’s where the BA coaching staff comes in, working endless hours to ensure the Cardinals are always prepared.

“The kids know if you’re faking. If you expect them to be in the gym all the time you have to be there,” Trnka says.

Those hours in the gym aren’t necessarily in Van Orsow, they’re spread across the dizzying menagerie of cramped high school gyms statewide.

“We put a pretty important emphasis on scouting,” Boelter says. “At tournament time, you’re scrambling to see as many schools as you can.”

Boelter and his assistant coaches routinely drive hundreds, even thousands, of miles every season to prepare game plans. The Cardinals play Class AA titan Marshall every year, and the story goes that Marshall always tries to schedule the match at the beginning of the year before the BA staff can get out on the scouting trail.

“We always were so prepared,” Bethany Boelter says. “He was always out scouting. When we’re not playing he’s watching someone else.”

Boelter and his staff’s statewide treks take on a new resonance when the state tournament rolls around. In recent years, the BA coaches would try to predict which four sections would get the top four seeds, then disperse across the highways of Minnesota to scout the other four.

“He’s driven hundreds of miles to see a particular opponent,” Trnka says. “We always felt we had an edge.”

But sometimes it didn’t quite work out. In November, Boelter and his staff were shocked when Win-E-Mac didn’t get a top-four seed and was slotted to play BA in the first round. The Cardinals scrambled, put together a roughshod scouting report and squeaked by the Patriots 3-2.

“We guessed wrong,” Boelter says. “That hasn’t happened more than once or twice over the years.”

That day against Win-E-Mac the Cardinals were able to win without a detailed scouting report — although they came terrifyingly close to being sent home — because the girls always had a fallback.

Book 6: Players vs. System

“We were thinking the game at a higher level than other teams.” — Beth Hanson

In some ways volleyball is like football; there is the age-old question of players vs. system. Can a perfect system make up for imperfect players? Can a bevy of talent make up for a limited game plan? The answer to both is often yes. When you have a perfect confluence of the two? That’s what leads to five state championships in nine years.

The Cardinals have had more than their share of spectacular volleyball players. From Minnesota Gatorade Player of the Year Betty Slinger in 2003 to Miss Minnesota Volleyball candidate Holly Hafemeyer in 2009. Since 2002, 14 different Cardinals have been named All-State and two more have earned honorable mentions. It does lead to murmurs in the crowds about spoiled rich kids and recruiting.

The rich kids stigma is easier to debunk. More than 60 percent of BA students receive some level of financial assistance to attend, according to President and Principal Sherri Langfeldt. But the recruiting?

“Private schools always get accused of recruiting,” Boelter says. “If we’re supposed to be recruiting, I should be fired because I’ve done a really lousy job.”

While that wisecrack may leave much to be desired — if Boelter is recruiting, he’s actually been doing a very good job — it can be backed up by evidence. According to Boelter, the vast majority of his players have been in the program since elementary school, and the few exceptions were playing for BA by seventh grade. In actuality, Boelter has relied on a steady stream of above-average athletes and has impressed upon them a devotion to their craft.

“He’s had an unbelievable amount of players that want to put in the time to get good,” Morken says. “You’ve had kids that have wanted to dedicate themselves to be at that elite level.”

On top of the players, the BA system is concrete enough in some areas, yet malleable enough in others to create a style that works year in and year out. Boelter started by coaching in a 4-1 system, switched to a 6-2, went to a 5-1, rigged an unusual 6-3 in 2003, went back to a 5-1 and has returned the last two years to a 6-2. The defense is a mix of a rotation defense and a reading defense and the back row and block are adjusted yearly, but, Boelter says, “The basic framework for the system doesn’t change much.”

The rebar of that framework is based on serving, serve-receive, passing and defense.

“They’re so fundamentally sound and so prepared,” Morken says. “He’s so organized that his teams don’t beat themselves.”

Beyond Xs and Os, the BA method also preaches the mental approach to the game, which focuses on goal setting and the old “take it one point at a time” mantra.

“He would talk strategy once in awhile, but for the most part it was remembering our goals,” Slinger says. “Most important with us was keeping our head in the game and staying focused on our goals and what we wanted to get done.”

Book 7: Maker of bolts

“I think it’s a reflection of him that they’re as good as they are.” — Lonnie Morken

Finally, we arrive at the last of our reasons for BA’s success. The man who makes it all work: The Puppetmaster. Boelter, however, would prefer this story never even mention him.

“I really don’t want this article to focus on me,” he writes in an e-mail a few weeks after being interviewed.

But when you start talking to those around him, those he’s coached and coached against and coached with, they don’t even wait for a prompt before praising him.

“He’s been an incredible mentor for me,” Hanson says. “I learned a lot from him. He’s one of my biggest role models.”

When he coaches volleyball Boelter is surprisingly calm. He is almost a bizarro version of his basketball self. Occasionally he’ll stand up to argue a call, but for the most part he stays in his seat, blithely directing play calls, always in his khakis and black BA volleyball shirt. By turns he is patient, aggressive, kind and stern. But after an emotional match he becomes Dick Vermeil, unable to contain his joy that manifests itself when his dark, German looks wrinkle in on themselves until you can’t tell if he’s happy or just stubbed his toe.

“He’s very emotional,” Morken says.

But the girls love him for it.

“He is just an incredible man,” says Hanson. “He treats all of his players with such respect. We all feel like we’re extended daughters.”

The name Boelter is German for “maker of bolts,” and while Boelter may not have much of a blacksmith background, if you think of bolts as the mechanism that holds an apparatus together, then you’re on to something.

“He would push you, he would tell you straight up you weren’t working hard enough and you needed to work harder,” Budde says. “He always knew what to say. He never told you that you played awful tonight. He knew what to say at the right time.”

“You can never question that he cares,” Bethany Boelter says.

Book 8: Not just participants

“In any situation in life he taught us to think about others before yourself. I think that helps me still.” — Jena Budde

When Boelter started, his first goal was to convince a jumble of 13- to 17-year-old girls that they were lean, mean athletes who through hard work could become the best at what they did. He worked them harder than they had been worked before. He had them in the gym on Saturdays and playing volleyball all year long.

“We had some resistance,” he says. “But I said you can’t have it both ways. If you want attention, if you want people to recognize the effort you’re putting into it, then you have to put the effort and the commitment into it.”

That was 20 years ago. Boelter is a little older now, according to his players he’s a little gentler with a “softer heart” than when he started. Maybe the years have taken the edge off. Maybe the championships have allowed him to relax. But he’s certainly not resting on his laurels. He’s still putting in the hours — he laments that his rock gardens have suffered in recent years — guiding his treasured program toward another state title. But even if it all came crashing down, if the Cardinals stopped winning and the championship banners started fading, Boelter would lay his head down at night knowing he accomplished his greatest goal.

“Now there is no question these girls are athletes, not just participants,” he says, leaning back in his trademark black sweatshirt at a round table in his windowless office. “We’ve seen our kids as they’ve gone on to college. They go out as very confident young women who believe they can accomplish great things. That’s the goal of athletics.”

— Sports editor Brendan Burnett-Kurie may be reached at 333-3129.