Despite living on opposite sides of the bay, Cailyn Boykin and Alice Wood have a lot in common. They started their education at the same elementary school where they once played on the same youth sports teams. Today they’re both juniors at local high schools where they play the same sport (volleyball) and the same position (setter). In August they will both start their seasons as defending state champions, and they will both be led by head coaches who share the same nickname: Mom.
Coach Gretchen Boykin, head coach of Spanish Fort High School’s volleyball team, and her daughter, Cailyn, have been on the court together in some form or fashion for Cailyn’s entire life.
“Cailyn was born in July, one month before the Juanita Bodie Tournament,” Coach Boykin explains. “So when she was one month old, she was on the bus headed to a volleyball tournament. We would ride her around in the ball cart, and she spent a lot of time in the locker room. People used to always ask us, ‘Don’t you want to have another baby, so Cailyn can have a sibling?’ And I always said, ‘She gets 15 new siblings every year.’”
While Cailyn did try a few other sports, her literal upbringing on the volleyball court sealed her fate. “When I was six or seven years old, I remember being at a volleyball tournament and a ref was needed, so I jumped up on the ref stand and the girls on the court were literally looking to me to blow the whistle before each serve,” Cailyn laughs.
When the day finally arrived for Cailyn to join her mom on the varsity team at Spanish Fort, “Coach” and “Mom” just didn’t feel right on the court, so she invented her own communication signal. “When she’s on the court and she wants to get my attention, she looks over at the sideline and says ‘Hey!’ and claps her hands three times,” Coach Boykin explains with a laugh. “It’s just become how she summons me now.”
Coach Boykin played the same position as Cailyn during her own high school and collegiate volleyball career, and a recent personality test at training camp proved the apple did not fall far from the tree both on and off the court.
“Cailyn and I had the same personality number, of course,” Coach Boykin laughs. “I think we are very similar, but she leads in a different way than I think I did on the court. I was a little bit more vocal, whereas she leads more by example. But mentally she’s kind of an extension of me on the court. She knows which plays I would say to run, and I feel like she understands in certain situations what would be the best thing to do. On the flip side, there are disadvantages to knowing a person so well. There are certain times when I turn to my assistant and say, ‘You go talk to her,’ because I know it is something that will not go well coming from me. At the end of the day, I’m still Mom.”
Last year Coach Boykin and Cailyn celebrated the end of their first year together with state championship rings. To go on that journey again with her daughter is something Coach Boykin doesn’t take for granted.
“All of these years she grew up around the team, but for her to actually be on the team now and to be such an impactful player, it’s cool to share that as Coach and Mom,” Coach Boykin says. “I appreciate the fact that we’ve been able to do this together and have this experience, and we’re looking forward to hopefully two more before she graduates.”
Similar to Cailyn, Alice Wood also grew up with a former collegiate volleyball player for a mom. Alice was six years old when her family relocated from Arlington, Texas, to Fairhope and her mom, Kate Wood, took a job as the head coach of the Dirty Dozen volleyball team at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School.
“As a kid, I tried a little bit of everything — basketball, soccer, swimming, volleyball — but I spent a lot of time watching my mom coach volleyball, and I saw the success they were having and what the program was about,” Alice recalls. “Volleyball is such a team sport, and seeing the team dynamics and how close the girls were in the locker room made me realize pretty fast that I wanted to be a part of that.”
For Coach Wood, this is her second go-round coaching a daughter. Her oldest daughter, Ella, also played for the Dirty Dozen. “I joke with a lot of my mom friends that I’m just thankful God gave me two girls so I could try again,” she laughs. “I think as I get older, I get better at it. I realize what is and isn’t important.”
For Coach Wood and Alice, what became important were their own rules. “We do not talk about volleyball at home unless she brings it up,” Coach Wood explains. “I remember one time something happened at practice, and I knew we were going to have to have a conversation about it, so I tried to bring it up the next day in the car on the way to practice. And as soon as I started, she quickly cut me off and said, ‘Oh no, we are not at school yet. You’re going to have to wait.’ And she was right, so I just said, ‘Okay, fair enough.’”
As far as handling the wins and losses, Coach Wood looks up to her daughter’s example. “Alice probably handles it better than I do,” she admits. “She’s pretty much like, ‘That stinks,’ and then she’s able to turn the page. I think she has helped me learn to put things in perspective a little more. I used to define myself too much in winning and losing, but I’ve never seen that in her. She seems to have a calmness about her, like whether she wins or loses, she still has that ‘I’m a winner’ mentality.”
During the offseason, Coach Wood oversees the local club volleyball program that Alice also plays for. “I used to always coach a club team in the offseason, but I realized I did that wrong with my oldest daughter,” Coach Wood says. “I was coaching 12 year old kids rather than just being present to watch my daughter compete. In the past some people have been critical of that and said, ‘Coach Wood only watches her own daughter play.’ And to that, I say, ‘Yes, as she should.’ As a mother, I just want to be part of it and watch my daughter compete. Because as a parent, you can’t get that back.”
During the school season, when the Woods are back on the same team, their close relationship helps ease the transition from mother and daughter to coach and player.
“Last year, Alice was a sophomore setter and ran the team, so that was fun to watch her navigate that and create her own flow,” Coach Wood says. “It was definitely a tough job as a sophomore, but I trust her implicitly. Very rarely does she ever ask me what she should do on the court. She usually says, ‘This is what we should do,’ and I say, ‘Alright, let’s do it.’ What I’ve learned with kids like her is to be really careful when you try to ABC them, because you’re taking away what they’re best at.”
In August, Coach Wood and her daughter Alice will set out in search of a lofty goal: a fourth state championship in a row for the Dirty Dozen, and their third together.
“There is pressure, but pressure is a privilege,” says Alice. “Winning is always the goal, but I think we’re just super excited to get after it and show what we have this year.”
A straight shot down Old Shell Road from McGill, a third mother-daughter duo takes the volleyball court at St. Paul’s Episcopal High School. Like Coach Wood, this is head coach Lisa Marston’s second time having a daughter on her team.
“When my oldest daughter, Reiney, was coming along she threw me a little curveball when she was in seventh grade and said, ‘I think I’m going to be a cheerleader.’ So I had to really white-knuckle it for a while, and then she decided she did want to play volleyball,” Coach Marston laughs.
When Reiney joined the varsity team at St. Paul’s with her mom, they also set boundaries around volleyball and home.
“We kind of agreed that at home it would be mom and daughter and at school it would be coach and player,” explains Coach Marston. “And if I needed to change modes or she needed to change modes, we’d kind of announce it. If I was at home, I’d say, ‘Reiney, I’ve got to go into coach mode. I need you in player mode.’ The lines are a little more blurred now with my second daughter, Ivey, who is in her second year on the varsity team, but I think we mostly operate the same way.”
For Ivey, being able to quickly read her mom’s mood proves to be an advantage on the court. “Before anyone else I can notice when Coach Marston’s mood turns sour if we aren’t giving enough effort, so that gives me the motivation to step up and encourage my teammates a little bit more because I’m scared,” Ivey jokes.
As a collegiate volleyball player at the University of North Carolina and a collegiate head coach at Davidson College for 14 years, Coach Marston has had plenty of unique experiences in the sport, but her favorite one has been coaching her daughters.
“It’s been a huge honor. Not everybody gets that; they don’t get to have their children in their workplace, and in a workplace that is pivotal to character development and all those things that they’re going to use in life. And it’s also been such an honor to get to know them in a different way, as well as their friends. When Reiney was a senior, her closest friends were also on the team and captains, and that was one of my favorite seasons. Ivey is going to be one of six seniors this year, and I’ve had relationships with all those seniors at some point in the past 18 years, so that makes it a lot more fun for me. And it also gives me a perspective of this is about friendships and relationships, you know, maybe even more than the X’s and O’s. So I feel like it’s made me a better coach for sure.”
Coach Marston has had a daughter on her team for four of her 11 seasons as the head coach at St. Paul’s, and this year her assistant coach will have a daughter on the team as well. While they have joked “I’ll instruct your daughter, if you instruct mine,” the last names truly don’t matter.
“Obviously there’s a closer relationship with my own daughters, but I consider all of them my daughters,” Coach Marston says. “I try to push them really hard, but I also try to always respect them and hopefully they see that and feel that. At the very least, it’s important that I remember that they’re all someone’s daughter.”
As the summer fades on both sides of the bay, three mothers and three daughters will take the court again in August as a new season begins. Win or lose, the journey together—coach and player, mother and daughter—will always be the greatest reward.
