1 Plymouth To try to properly tell the story of Nebraska Volleyball, and the program''s first milestone journey, it seems like a really good place to start with a pilgrim from the mighty village of Plymouth, Nebraska. Kathleen Ann Drewes was born to Ed and Velma Drewes on October 26, 1950. Kathy grew up in Plymouth, a resilient place in the northeast corner of Jefferson County. The original Plymouth was founded in 1872 by a group of New Englanders who named their new home after Plymouth, Massachusetts. That first Plymouth in Nebraska actually had to close up shop because of conflicts with the railroads over depot locations. As a result, Plymouth was relocated about twenty years later. It was a short trip about three miles up the road to where the village is located today, on the divide between Cub Creek and Dry Creek, on Highway 4 just 15 miles west of Beatrice. It''s now home to four hundred residents, roughly the same population as when Kathy was a girl.
Ed Drewes was a self-employed pipe organ and piano tuner and technician. For work he traveled throughout Nebraska and several other nearby states. Velma helped Ed with that work and took care of the kids and the family home as well. The Drewes attended a beautiful church--St. Paul''s Lutheran, a landmark that you can''t miss when coming into town. Light- ning caused a fire that destroyed the church in 1913, but the members regathered and rebuilt just a year later. That''s where Kathy went to school from grades 3 through 8. Her first volleyball memories are from those days on the St.
Paul''s playground during recess. Her brother, Dick, helped her athletic dreams along when he took a teaching job in nearby Clatonia. This was just as Kathy was getting ready for high school. "When he was at Clatonia, he did some basketball and football coaching. They also had volleyball, and they had a year that they were just tremendous, and I was very inspired watching those girls play. That gave me something to shoot for when I got into high school." Kathy Drewes had the height to match her love for athletics. By the time she finished high school she was a little more than 6-foot-1, so volleyball and basketball were a good fit for her.
She loved all of it. On the volleyball court, she was a spiker. "At that time, you had a setter and the rest were hitters. Of course, we called them spikers back then. So you had one setter, and the rest were spikers, so I was a spiker. It wasn''t classified like you have all these position titles now." She was a star for the Plymouth High Pilgrims for two years, in a variety of sports and activities--Kathy loved music, too--but then came change. There were new challenges at every turn for the Pilgrims and the Drewes family.
The consolidation of the towns of Plymouth, DeWitt, and Swanton led to the creation of Tri County High, which is where Kathy finished high school. The nifty new school just south of DeWitt came with a big scare. "My junior year, they told us we probably wouldn''t see any more volleyball because they thought with all of the schools consolidating the girls sports would probably just be phased out. Of course, all of the girls were not real happy about that so we actually signed petitions to try to get volleyball back in for our senior year." The petition plan worked. "They let us play our senior year, and then they said girls sports were here to stay because the other consolidating schools around were also keeping the girls sports, so we were overjoyed with that, but we had to fight for it." That was 1967. That was also when Kathy lost her father to a heart attack the first week of her senior year .
Ed Drewes had no life insurance. Everyone had to pitch in to make ends meet. Kathy said her mom worked hard to pay the bills. "She was employed at Formfit Rogers in Beatrice and later at Wasserman Wood Products near our home in Plymouth. The company manufactured pallets. The wood was often heavy, and it was physically very hard work, although I don''t recall ever hearing her complain." But despite the hardships at home, Kathy had her mind set on going to Lincoln to get her degree. She finished up at Tri County as part of the school''s first graduating class.
She worked at the co-op filling station in Plymouth. She was a waitress at the Plymouth Steak House. Whatever it took, she was going to college at the University of Nebraska. "My mother and brother were so supportive. I also worked as a health tech in my dorm for a couple of years. I graduated with a bachelor of science in education, with a major in vocal music and a minor in English." She also played some volleyball, but that happened mostly by accident, starting in 1968. "I was enrolled in a field hockey class.
In Teachers College we had to take some required physical education classes as well as some electives. I needed to switch to another physical education class due to my music school requirements. I enrolled in a volleyball class. Dr. Janette Sayre, professor of physical education, was our instructor. She talked to me and said, ''You should play on the university team,'' to which I replied, ''I never knew we had one.'' This was the second year that varsity intercollegiate volleyball was being played.".