RAPID CITY, S.D. --- The three team captains for the South Dakota Mines volleyball team have to "pass muster" so to speak.

Fifth-year head coach Lauren Torvi Prochazka said her program has a formal captain process which includes a self-nomination process and the squad voting on the three team leaders. She said they have a specific voting format in which they name captains based on certain roles.
They determine points based on those roles in selecting the captains.

Named captains for the 2022 Hardrocker squad include senior libero Anna Thomas, in her third year in the role, while senior setter Kassie Luce and junior setter Kiley Metzger are in their first year as team captains.

"We take our captain development process pretty seriously," Torvi Prochazka said. "I always tell them that before you agree to do this you have to understand that not only is it a big responsibility to be a captain on our team, it is also a huge time commitment."

Part of the captain-choosing theory came from a long conversation Torvi Prochazka had with Mines men's assistant basketball coach Roger Trennepohl about four years ago. They talked about a book he read about leadership that was based on being in the trenches and who you want around you. Torvi Prochazka said as a team they discuss having that person who has your back, that person who is loyal, that person you need to trust. She said that having the person to your right, which is your strong side, is someone of friendship, someone you understand, and someone of vulnerability. The person on your left, which is your weak side, would be the person who leads with their voice, the person who is willing to do the tough thing, the person who is willing to put themselves first and to kind of sacrifice themselves for you.

Torvi Prochazka assigns different point values based on what she thinks the team needs. She added there are different kinds of leaders, and they need different kinds of leaders.

In describing her captains, Torvi Prochazka said Metzger is the calm presence, Luce is the fiery leader and Thomas is the hard-working, organized leader.

"I think it is important to what I am teaching my team and young women, that you don't need to be fitting in a square hole, to be this type of captain. You can be any type of leader, but it is what the team needs, and the team needs very different things," she said. "We might have a captain who is very approachable and very kind, and very easy to talk to. You need that role, but you also need that tough captain who is going to say the tough things, do the tough things and get on people who are not doing things right. You need to have that balance of different roles."


Kiley Metzger

Metzger, from Rock Rapids, Iowa, said that being a captain requires a lot of responsibility and time commitment. When she was a freshman, teammate Shyann Bastian took her under her wing and showed her what it means to be a captain with the effort, the time, and all of the little details that come with it.

"As I got older I knew I wanted to be that type of player where teammates could come to me for help with their problems, help them get through school and volleyball and all of that," she said. "One of my things as a captain is I like to really emphasize all of the relationships I have with my teammates, whether it is with the freshmen or the seniors. I try to build personal relationships on the court and off the court."

Now that she is a captain, Metzger said she has been working towards being a more vocal leader, something she admits she wasn't very good at as a freshman and a sophomore.

"I would cheer when everyone else cheered, but in the few months of being captain, I have to push my teammates to be better with our high expectation of play, and in practice," she said.

Torvi Prochazka said that Metzger's position helps her become the leader she is.

"Kiley is very approachable. She is very much a calm presence, which becomes more of an approachable leader that they can rely on," she said. "But Kiley is tough and that comes down to her upbringing and her roots. Nothing is going to frazzle her; nothing is going to stress her out and nothing is going to make her complain or moan. You need that leader to understand that 'school is hard, volleyball is hard, the adversity you face is hard, but we're going to find a way to get through it and be better because of it.' Kiley does that the most in her leadership style."

Metzger said there are a few times as captains when they stop practice and bring it in and "get our heads on straight and focus. Usually after a break or two we will get it together and start improving on things,".

Off the court there is the stress of school and helping her teammates, she added. She said they have to learn how to balance their own life outside of school while trying to help others do the same thing. "Other teammates might be having a bad day and you have to put your personal life to the side and try to help turn them around. It's a balance of your own and the team," she said.

Metzger said that being a captain means a lot to her. "It is a high achievement, and I am honored to be nominated from my teammates who think highly of me. It definitely puts adds pressure as you try to be a good example."

Metzger is an electrical engineering major, who wants to go into the power industry.



Kassie Luce

Like Metzger, Luce looked up to Bastian as a leader when she first became a Hardrocker and felt that someday she could use those same traits as a leader.

"I always thought, 'maybe I'll try,'' she said. "When we did our exercise to see and I realized that the team trusted me with that information, I dug right in and thought 'yep, I'm ready.' I'm excited about this and it is really fun. It's like a different perspective. It's not about playing or not playing, but I see different things now than I did before I was captain."

From Meeker, Colo., Luce is the vocal captain of the three. She likes to start the fire, get excited, and get everyone around her excited. Every point matters, she adds, and you have to make them count.

"As long as we are playing with some sort of passion, we do well," she said. "If that little spark is teetering, then it is my job to say something to get them fired up and get on to it."

She also said that she doesn't have a problem in practice telling a teammate that they need to step up. To her, it is business, not personal.

"I will be everyone's friend on the court and off the court. But as soon as we're not accomplishing something, I put my foot down. We want to win, I want to win, so I don't have a problem addressing things to people when it comes to volleyball," she said. "At the same time, when we go into the locker room, I'm not mad at you, we're buds. We just need to accomplish our goals."

Torvi Prochazka said that Luce, in her four years, has matured and played a lot of roles on and off the court.

"Kassie is the kind of athlete who can relate to anyone, not only because of her personality, but also because she has done it all," she said. "She can communicate effectively, and she can understand that regardless of what her playing time is 'I'm going to work extremely hard.' She is driven to win and she is very feisty. I've told her for years 'what makes you so successful is your drive to win and how fiery you want to be on and off the floor.' She also has a lot of fun."

Luce is a twin, with sister Kristin also a senior and a member of the Hardrocker squad. She said that she likes the ins and outs of the team, and it is an honor that her teammates trust her.

"It makes me feel good at night knowing that my team has my back, and they know I have their back. I really enjoy it," she said.

Luce is a business management in technology major and has already received a job offer from Enterprise in Rapid City.



Anna Thomas

Thomas and Luce came in with a large class of freshmen and transfers, 10 new players to the roster. Although there were senior captains at the time, Thomas took it upon herself to step up because she was going to lead in the future with such a young team.

"Coach always told us it was our program as captains and as players, as the entire team," she said. "It was kind of a fresh start our freshman year, so we wanted to have the mindset to take the program to new heights with the help of the senior leadership that we had when we were freshmen. I think that is what influenced us."
Torvi Prochazka said that Thomas stepped into a level of responsibility as she became a starter at libero as a freshman, winning their Hardest Working Award.

"She set the tone by leading by example. Anna, at an early stage, was the epitome of leading by example, like they were going to do things like Anna," she said. "She does the right thing, she works hard in school and she never stops playing on the court. It's 100 percent all of the time. It was very easy for her teammates to think the following year, 'OK, if we are going to do things, we are going to do them at Anna's level. We want to follow her lead.'

Thomas, a Fort Worth, Texas, native, said that as a three-year captain, it has been exciting to see the team grow and change, as while they have a lot of the same players each year, every group is different.

"I think just how we play and interact with each other is what has been cool," she said. "We're trying to find the dynamic for each team and how we want to run the team as captains and help facilitate our team bonding and that kind of thing."

An example of that was this past spring the Hardrockers did a team exercise about how a player wants to be talked to or treated when they aren't performing well.

"There are certain things that with my work with past teams or past teammates, that you have to keep in your mind that it is not how this person is going to respond, it is not going to work with her," she said.

Thomas said possibly her biggest role as captain for the past three years is organization, how she does the team calendar, or how she makes sure everyone knows when they go somewhere and what we are going to wear. Also, there's organization as a team unit on the court that goes along with her being a libero.

"Coach always tells me to control the back court when things aren't going well on the court and we look flustered. That's when we try to organize," she said.

Like her captain teammates, Thomas said it has been an honor to be thought of by her teammates the way she is.

"It means a lot that your team trusts you. It means you have to put in a little extra work, but you get that reward. It's an honor. I have a lot of responsibility," she said.

Thomas graduated this past May with her applied biological sciences degree and is now working on her master's in biomedical engineering.



All working together

Torvi Prochazka said the three captains meet with the coaching staff once a week and they informally meet often around that formal meeting. She said their communication is probably 24-7.

"We are always on the same page; we always talk about what our team needs or what they need for us from a coaching staff," she said. "The time they put in being captains is probably the biggest responsibility they have in being aware of what the team needs to be successful."

Torvi Prochazka said this particular group has been a lot of fun to work with. She said they are not only committed to the program and the process of how they grow their program but also to each other. They have the team's back and know what they need to do to support the team on and off the court.

She said the three captains have to be approachable, personal, and relate to the team well. With seven freshmen, she said you need captains who can lead the way for a young team and show them "this is how we are going to behave, these are the habits we have to create, this is the academic goal that we have."

Torvi Prochazka said they are going to be a smart team and work hard as this is how they are going to represent themselves.

"It is really important that I trust my captains at a high level," she said. "I give them so much responsibility and there is so much communication. They must be able to take my message and take it back to the team and get them to understand. I have a great level of trust with them. I think it goes both ways.

"For me as a volleyball coach, it is all about the player-run program. I try to tell them as much as I can that this is a player-run program and they own this, I don't. It is not about me, it's not Lauren's program, it is their program. Whatever the work they put into it, it is going to be."

About South Dakota Mines
The South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is a member of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) and NCAA Division II offering 11 men's and women's varsity intercollegiate athletic programs. The Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference is a premier NCAA Division II conference with 15 members, as well as four associate members, located in the states of California, Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah.