Hodges gets volleyball gig at Clear Falls
By L. Scott Hainline
Chronicle correspondent
Like several head coaches at brand new Clear Falls High School, Lyndsay Hodges has been down this road before.
Before being named Clear Falls' first volleyball coach, Hodges spent seven years creating a program as Cypress Ridge's head coach.
That experience at Cy Ridge will 100 percent help at Clear Falls," Hodges said. The very first year with only freshmen and sophomores, and no varsity team, is a big, big teaching year, and it lays the foundation for the future of the program.
I think it's great that there is no varsity competition right out of the shoot and we have a chance to work with the young players with no pressure to make the playoffs for a full season."
Clear Falls, the newest of five Clear Creek ISD high schools (Clear Creek, Clear Lake, Clear Brook and Clear Springs the others), opens in August and will field a junior varsity and two freshmen teams in 2010 under Hodges' direction.
Varsity play for all team sports except football starts in the second school year in 2011-12, while the first varsity football season comes in 2012-13.
I've coached junior varsity and freshman teams before, so not having a varsity, or a shot at the playoffs, won't really be an adjustment," Hodges said. It's not that much out of the ordinary, and really, it's just back to the basics."
When that first varsity season rolls around in 2011, the plan is to have the Lady Knights compete in District 24-4A against Friendswood, Santa Fe, Dawson, Manvel, Texas City, Ball and La Marque.
If the as-expected student enrollment numbers are in place in 2012, Clear Falls will be in 24-5A that now includes Clear Creek, Clear Lake, Clear Brook, Clear Springs, Pearland, Dickinson, Brazoswood and Alvin.
I know more about the 5A districts having been at that level at Cy Ridge than I do about the 4A districts," Hodges said. I'll have to do my homework about the 4A teams beginning this season, but I do know both districts are very tough."
Hodges played high school volleyball at San Antonio Lee and the next level at Texas Woman's University in Denton. She was an assistant coach at Denton High School for two seasons and for one at Cy-Fair before taking over at Cy Ridge.
She's busy with club volleyball this summer, and last week, took her Richmond Southwest Juniors 15-and-under team made up of players from Katy, Fort Bend County and Bellaire to the Junior Olympics in Reno, Nev.
During recent meetings with some of her future Lady Knights, Hodges could sense the enthusiasm.
During the first season or two at Cy Ridge, the kids were a little disappointed about not being able to go to the high schools they thought they'd be going to, but I don't get that feeling at all with our incoming players at Clear Falls," she said. They're very excited about being the first group to establish the program, and those positive feelings are coming from players and parents.
We had new and very nice facilities at Cy Ridge, but the setup at Clear Falls is just awesome, and like nothing I've ever seen. I've been unloading seven years of stuff I built up at Cy Ridge into a new office, and unboxing brand new equipment, so it's sort of like Christmas."
