Olathe Northwest juniors Val Galligan and Kendall Yarnell stay busy during the spring sports season.

Hopefully that will prepare them for a postseason stretch that may push them to the limits of balancing their loaded schedules.

Galligan and Yarnell, this week’s Capitol Federal® True Blue® Students of the Week, are currently ranked in the top six of Class 6A in multiple throwing events. They are also members of Olathe Northwest’s currently undefeated softball team.

Galligan credited her coaches with making it possible to excel in two different sports, and across a myriad of track events, during the spring season.

“We have such flexible coaches that work with us at everything,” Galligan said. “I will go in the morning sometimes, then I’ll go after school for practices. But they’re just willing to work with us for whatever will make us most successful.”

Yarnell echoed those sentiments, thanking the help from “our amazing coaches” in both sports. She said she and Galligan often finish up softball practice just to rush over to the school’s track to work with coaches who are willing to stay after to work with them.

“It makes it really easy when we have a great support system and great coaches to help us through it,” Yarnell said. “It’s not just as athletes, but as high schoolers too.”

Their support system has allowed them to develop into student-athletes with legitimate state title aspirations across both sports.

Olathe Northwest softball coach Shawn Lopez threw the praise back to Galligan, Yarnell and the other dual sport athletes who he credited as a big part of his team’s hot start this season.

“We’ve got multiple multi-sport athletes, if that makes sense,” Lopez said. “We’ve got Yarnell, Galligan, Kennedy Glassford also throws in track. Ashlyn Gaughan, our shortstop, runs. Her and Val both run on the 4x100. That’s at least four right there and I’m forgetting somebody I’m sure.

“We’re sharing duties with the track team, but who am I getting in the way of that if a girl has that much talent where she can do both? We’re just blessed to have those girls.”
 

Lopez said that Yarnell’s versatility has particularly come in handy for the Ravens. Last year, Yarnell took over at catcher when sophomore Lily Winright was injured. 

“She’s moved back to her more natural position at third base,” Lopez said. “She wrestled this year and I think that really helped her quickness and agility.”

Lopez said that Galligan is still getting adjusted at the plate after making the transition from being on the JV team last year, but the junior outfielder is already becoming a strong contributor for the Ravens.

In addition to their softball team’s hot start, both Galligan and Yarnell own the top spot on the Class 6A leaderboards in throwing events following their performances at the KU Relays in Lawrence, a city they hope to return to for state softball at the end of May.

Galligan, who competes in three different throwing events, showed off her skills for both throwing and navigating a double-booked schedule with her performance at the KU Relays.

“I had to go throw prelims for shot put, run into the arena to go throw prelims in javelin, then I had to go run out of the arena to go throw finals for shot put, then run back in and go throw finals in javelin,” Galligan said. 

It worked out for Galligan as she set her PR in the javelin and took the top spot in 6A with a throw of 138 feet, 5 inches. Her mark eclipsed her previous best of 137-7 from last year’s state meet, when she won the event by nearly 10 feet.

Yarnell currently sits at the top of the Class 6A discus leaderboards with her season-best throw of 133 feet, 7 inches from the KU Relays. She set her personal record in discus at last year’s state meet, finishing in second with her PR of 138-3. Yarnell also set her shot put PR at the KU Relays with a throw of 37-10 to take 14th.
 

Galligan did not throw discus at the KU Relays, but her PR of 116-5 at the Olathe Invitational puts her in the top six for Class 6A this season. 

The one throwing event that Galligan and Yarnell share is the shot put, where both are ranked in the top five in Class 6A.

Galligan, who had not competed in shot put before this year, held the No. 1 spot after breaking the school record with a 42-0.5 throw at the Olathe Invitational on April 7. As the story goes, Galligan learned the slide technique on Wednesday and then set the school record on Friday.

But both her frontrunner and school-record status were short lived as senior teammate Adrienne Locke-Garcia reclaimed those distinctions with a throw of 43-1 a few weeks later at the Shawnee Mission West Invitational.

Normally, a team with three throwers delivering those marks would feel really confident about cleaning up at the state meet. However, Olathe Northwest should not count those team points too soon.

As in years past, the KSHSAA state track and field championships falls smack dab in the middle of the busiest high school sports weekend of the year. 

If Olathe Northwest advances to state in softball, the team would be in Lawrence on May 25 at Arrocha Ball Park playing in the quarterfinals, with the semifinals and championship game set for the next evening. That puts Galligan and Yarnell’s softball state championship dreams in direct conflict with their state championship dreams for track and field, scheduled for May 26-27 at Cessna Stadium in Wichita.

This scheduling balancing act is not new for these two Ravens. They’ve competed in two spring sports since they first entered middle school.

For dual sport athletes, Groundhog’s Day is when they try to see the shadow caused by their schedule in one sport overlapping the schedule in another.
 

“When you do dual sports, you definitely have to think about the overall picture,” Galligan said. “‘When does this happen? When does softball happen? When does track happen? And where is it?’ So we’ve definitely thought about it even before the season.

“You have to figure out times and what you want to do. They’re both team sports, even though sometimes they seem individual, but you gotta do what’s best for your team.”

These two also did not get much help with the scheduling of their events either. The Class 6A shot put and discus events will start later in the day on May 26. Only their javelin event is scheduled for May 27.

Yarnell said she’s already discussed the overlap a lot with her dad Lucas Yarnell, who coaches the Olathe Northwest throwers. 

“We started talking about how there’s all these ifs and buts and maybes,” Yarnell said. “If we do this in softball, will we be able to do this in track.”

Yarnell said they try not to get their hopes up too high for the possibility of being able to traverse back and forth across Kansas over that busy three-day stretch at the end of May. 

“We don’t want to be disappointed, but we’re definitely gonna try to help both teams,” Yarnell said. “We want to bring home some records and some plaques for the school. That’s really what it’s all about is just the team and bringing it home for the school.

“It’s really special to get to do both.”

For Galligan, that might mean needing to sit out softball to give the track team a potential medalist in all three throwing events.

“I hope to be back-to-back for javelin state titles,” Galligan said. “In shot put, I hope to maybe squeeze into the 1, 2, 3 and hopefully in discus squeeze into the 1, 2, 3. I feel like placing first, second or third (in multiple events) will really help the team achieve our overall goal.”
 

For Yarnell, she’s hoping that she’ll get to play with her team in the state softball tournament. If that happens and it causes her to miss her chance at a state title in discus, Yarnell plans to use that as an example to advocate for change in scheduling.

“That’s a big goal because I want to help other athletes, dual-sport athletes, be able to play in both sports and be able to compete at the highest level,” Yarnell said. “If that means I have to sacrifice a state competition for me, I’ll do that for the athletes who follow.”

But even if their softball season gets cut short of their state title dreams, Galligan and Yarnell are just enjoying the time that they get to spend competing together for their school.

The dynamic duo got more time to do that this year when Yarnell joined Galligan on the girls wrestling team.

“I made the decision to go to wrestling purely because I wanted to become a better athlete,” Yarnell said.

Yarnell said she did not feel like basketball was checking that box for her and she also fell out of love with the game.

“So when I committed to (University of Central Florida) for softball, I wanted to put myself in the best possible situation as an athlete,” Yarnell said.

Yarnell said she was lucky to have Galligan right there in the wrestling room with her as an experienced technician on the mat.

“It’s really fun to have someone like Val there to teach me and be there with me,” Yarnell said. “She was definitely a big part of my success.”

Galligan, who spent the previous year trying to convince Yarnell to switch wrestling, was happy to have her close friend in the wrestling room with her.

“I had someone to go through the hard times with me, someone to go through the fun times with me and just having each other by our side kept pushing us to get better,” Galligan said.

Galligan finished third in 170 pounds at the Class 6-5A state wrestling tournament. In her first season wrestling, Yarnell reached the regional semifinals at 190 before suffering two straight losses and finishing one victory away from joining Galligan and her other teammates at state. 

Yarnell is hoping she doesn’t have to experience that again a month from now.