Building a high school sports dynasty in Kansas doesn't come without hard work and sacrifice by coaches and players alike.
Building a dynasty from the ground up, as Joan Wells did at Lawrence High School, can be even more of a daunting task.
Wells spent 27 years as the volleyball coach at Lawrence High and during that Hall of Fame career, led the Lions to the state volleyball tournament every year but one — 1971, her first year at Lawrence and the first year for state volleyball tournaments sponsored by the Kansas High School Activities Association.
At the time there was little funding for girls' high school sports. So little that Wells coached three sports when she arrived at Lawrence, all on a volunteer basis.
That began to change in 1972 with the passage of Title IX, the federal law written to prevent gender discrimination and provide equal funding for educational programs, activities and athletics.
"Title IX came in and changed things a lot at the college level and also at the high school level," Wells said. "It certainly did at Lawrence High."
Born and raised in Atchison, Wells spent her entire teaching and coaching career at Lawrence High, starting as a student teacher during the spring of 1971 while a senior at the University of Kansas.
"In the 60s, when I was in high school, there really weren't any organized sports for girls at that time," Wells said. "The fall of 1971 was the first organized state tournament in Kansas, but we had a very good girls athletic club (at Atchison HIgh).
"We had sports days and play days, which involved other schools. We were especially competitive with Lawrence. We came to Lawrence for their volleyball sports day and they came to ours. As far as a volleyball background, that was probably as good as it could be at that time."
Things weren't much better at the collegiate level. KU didn't have a volleyball program when Wells first attended the university in the late 1960s. And once they did begin, funding was scarce.
"Marlene Mawson is known as the mother of women's athletics at KU," Wells said. "In the fall of 1968 she went to the Student Senate and got $2,000 to start the women's athletic program at KU.
"With Marlene, we got our foot in the door and she started building KU's program from there. But if you can imagine, the Student Senate gave us that $2,000 and they started with six sports on that amount of money. Things were different back then and it was all pre-Title IX."
Wells applied at schools in northeast Kansas while attempting to land her first teaching job in 1971, but only at Lawrence High did she find an administrator interested in developing a girls athletic program at the time.
"When I was interviewing for teaching jobs, I interviewed in Shawnee Mission, in north Kansas City and Lawrence," Wells said. "When I talked to Bill Medley, who was our principal at Lawrence at that time, he said 'You can start a girls program, but there is no money,' I had talked to administrators at the other schools and they absolutely wanted no part of it. Lawrence did.
"They had some money and some intramural funds, and did some fundraisers, so we had enough money to buy one set of uniforms, a little bit of equipment and that's pretty much how we got started.
"I coached volleyball, basketball and softball that first year, and also coached the following year with no salary."
With the passage of Title IX, Wells said the compensation for coaching girls athletics began to change. She initially received a supplemental contract matching that of an assistant coach for a boys program. The pay later matched that for a boys head coach, and finally, assistant coaches for girls teams were added as schools had to be completely compliant with Title IX in 1978.
By that time, Wells was well on her way to building that Lawrence High dynasty. The Lions reached the Class 5-4A state title match in both 1973 and 1974, then went unbeaten and won their first state title in 1975.
It was the first of 15 state championships for Lawrence with Wells as head coach and started a run of six consecutive state titles for the Lions.
"Our program was always about fundamentals," Wells said. "That was our foundation. We did pretty well because we had a good junior high programs. There were three junior highs in Lawrence and all of them had good sponsors.
"That helped and eventually I put together a volleyball camp for junior high kids and then things started to evolve. The skill level got better, but even up until the last year, just good fundamentals were so important in our program. We didn't do a lot of complicated things. Our offense was very simple and we just executed well."
The winning continued, with Lawrence claiming state titles in three consecutive years starting in 1983, then won six championships in a span of seven years starting in 1989.
When Wells retired after the 1997 season, she had a career record of 865-89 for a .907 winning percentage. In addition to the 15 state titles, there were seven runner-up finishes and the Lions twice placed third.
"For a lot of those girls, it was a goal and a privilege to play for Lawrence High," Wells said. "We had very competitive tryouts and we were successful. They worked really hard. 'Be the best you can be on and off the court and winning will take care of itself.' That was kind of our motto we went by.
"The girls were just happy to compete. They loved playing volleyball and they loved the chance to compete. To compete for Lawrence volleyball was like their dream."
That dream often led to extending their playing career beyond high school. Over those 27 seasons with the Lions, Wells had 29 athletes who went on to compete at the NCAA Division I level.
Wells is a member of the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, the KSHSAA Hall of Fame, the Kansas Volleyball Association Hall of Fame and the National Federation of State High School Associations Hall of Fame. She continued to teach physical education classes at Lawrence High for another five years after retiring from coaching.
"I missed the kids, the relationships and the competition," Wells said. "I can go watch a match and really get into it again, but I really don't miss the late nights and staying up until 1 a.m. doing stats, or being gone like eight Saturday's in a row.
"My assistant coach, Jo Huntsinger, took the position as head coach after I retired. The only way she would do it was if I would handle the administration part of it, and so I did.
"Part of our program was the Lawrence Tournament, which was one of the premier tournaments in the midwest. One of the greatest honors I had, after I retired from coaching, was they renamed that tournament the Joan L. Wells Tournament. I consider that one of the highlights of my career."
We are grateful to partner with WIN for KC, an organization with the mission to empower the lives of girls and women by advocating and promoting the lifetime value of sports through opportunities for participation and leadership development. WIN for KC and the KSHSAA believe involvement in activities and sports lay the ground work for supporting well-rounded citizens in our communities and beyond. For more on WIN for KC visit: https://www.sportkc.org/win-for-kc