By Tyler Dahlgren

The streets of Odell are almost always quiet.

As the sun set Tuesday night, silence echoed up and down the small village’s streets. I had my windows down, enjoying one of the first cool breezes of Autumn. It was a true joyride. An easy kind of peaceful. Completely still.

Odell, I tell you, could have passed for a ghost town.

But then I heard it. Climbing up Perry Street, still a couple blocks from the school, my destination. A trumpet blast, followed by some heavy trombone. Clear as day, and unmistakable. If Diller-Odell’s reputation as a top-notch volleyball environment was accurate, then I was heading in the right direction.

On game night, this is where everybody is. Everybody. Searching for a parking spot was like searching for the Lost City of Atlantis. They love their Griffins.

“You can see their support tonight, they’re already here,” said senior Karli Heidemann, standing in school’s state-of-the-art atrium midway through the junior varsity’s tilt with Johnson-Brock. “The student section is already full. They’re always here cheering us on. Knowing we have that level of incredible community support is a big part of what’s made this program successful.”

The school’s surge of volleyball success, state tournament qualifiers in seven of the last eight seasons and state champions in 2019 and 2020, very well could have started off the court.

“Character goes a long ways, and the girls have always had a lot of that,” said superintendent Mike Meyerle, whose daughter, Madelyn, graduated in 2022 after four years of wins, wins, and more wins (118 of them, to be exact). “Good families tend to produce kids that are honest, trustworthy hard-workers.”

It started with the 2014 team. Madelyn, a freshman at UNL, remembers watching those girls, wide-eyed and awe-struck. She was only in elementary school, but she already wanted to emulate everything they’d do.

“That’s when a group of us girls, my age and a little older, realized, ‘Okay, they’re really good. We want to be good, too,’” she said. “Our parents became really involved, they found out about club volleyball.

The girls had been playing together since they were six or seven years old, but the club circuit ramped competition, and time commitment, up more than a bit. Volleyball became a collective passion for a group of girls at Diller-Odell. Each starter on the 2020 championship team played club ball.

“If you have that many girls playing club volleyball, they truly have a passion for the game,” said Meyerle. “They’re going to school, they’re practicing basketball in some cases, they’re eating in the car, studying in the car, getting home at 11:15 at night. You better love it, right?”

And, boy, did they love it.

“Yes, we have talent, but we’ve also had girls that have wanted to work hard and win,” said third-year head coach Reba Hestermann. “That’s a big part of making a program successful. The girls are coachable, and they want to get out there and work hard every single day.”

That’s just their culture, Heidemann said. Karli, alongside her sister Addison, a 2021 graduated and current Iowa State Cyclone, have been integral in carrying it on.

“We’ve all grown up with this volleyball program and we all love it,” Karli, a Montana State commit, said. “Being young and growing up watching those older girls was awesome. And now we’re those older girls and we’re the ones who want to win and carry on that success so that we can share it with everyone that wants to be a part of it.”

Junior Keira Hennerberg is on the team now because of watching those games growing up back then.

“I just wanted to be a part of it,” she said. “It impacted me and pushed me be better, to take volleyball seriously so that I could be a part of this program.”

Mackenzie Vitosh’s story might just embody the spirit of Diller-Odell volleyball better than any news article or feature story ever could. The 2020 graduate and current St. Mary’s Flames middle hitter was born into this program. Literally.

Her mother coached the Griffins  20 years ago, when Diller and Odell were first consolidated. She was pregnant, very pregnant, went she went into labor on the sidelines during an actual game, a Griffin victory she saw all the way through.

“They won the game, and then she went to the hospital and had me,” Mackenzie laughs. “I’ve been raised with volleyball. I’ve always had a volleyball in my hands, as long as I can remember.”

And she always wanted to be a Griffin. Mackenzie was a 7th-grade student manager when her sisters, one a senior and one a sophomore, helped take the team to state for the first time.

“I got to be involved in all of the big games,” she said. “I was really cool to see how the girls came together and impacted the community, and not just in Diller and Odell, but this entire area of Nebraska.”

Oh, that community. The same ones that filled the stands of Diller-Odell’s four-year-old gymnasium Tuesday night and participated in coordinated chants and cheered louder than you’ll hear most fans cheer. They’re just as much a part of this as the players and coaches.

“When the crowd was full, which it usually was, that just encouraged me to play better,” said Madelyn Meyerle. “Fans shape high school sports. Having that community there behind you, knowing they’re there, that’s been a big part of the program’s culture and success.”

That support, Vitosh added, has meant everything.

“At the state tournament, you would have thought we were a Class C or even a Class B team with the amount of people that were there,” she said. “I remember my senior year during the state championship, when we won for the first time, looking over the crowd at the Devaney Center and seeing nothing but orange and black. It still gives me chills just thinking about it. I really am thankful I grew up in a community like that.”

Madelyn has shown her professors photos of that crowd. They couldn’t believe that two towns with less than 400 people could pack a place so tight. The girls on those championship teams will be forever linked by a special bond.

“Winning state, especially back-to-back, there’s nothing like that,” she continued. “Nothing matches that feeling. We had a small group of girls, and everybody was super close, no matter their role on the team.”

That’s carried on through the current team, which polished off a 3-0 sweep on Tuesday night to push their season record to 18-5.

“The connection between all the girls is really good, and we have great coaches,” said sophomore Baileigh Vilda. “We just play together.”

Before the game Tuesday night, the “Little Griffins”, a group of future volleyball players, were announced alongside the starters. The varsity team holds youth volleyball camps each year and the upperclassmen don’t take being a role-model lightly.

“That’s a big part of building our program, making sure we’re giving back to those younger girls and including them in what we do,” said Hestermann. “It ensures that when they come into our program, they know what to expect and they know the standards.”

Vitosh’s sister coaches the junior high team, and she’ll often travel from Omaha to watch the girls play. She sees the culture being carried on, and can’t help but beam with pride.

“It’s so rewarding to see those little girls wanting to pick up a volleyball and playing in the hallway during a game or take a picture with you after one,” Vitosh said. “I still check in with the girls who were freshmen when I was a senior, making sure they’re still working hard and, more importantly, still doing well as a person. It’s not all about volleyball.”

Vilda agreed.

“Everyone’s really close here,” Vilda said before the game with Johnson-Brock. “We do have strong sports programs, but we also have good teachers and academics, too. Diller-Odell is a special place in a lot of aspects. It’s a great spot to be.”

Sustaining the level of success Diller-Odell has for a decade now isn’t an easy feat. Especially in a small school, where talent levels seem to ebb and flow. The Griffins have experienced a great level of talent, Mike Meyerle said, but the passion has been even higher.

Passion is easier to sustain. And it ain’t goingwhere.

“All the girls that have poured their hearts and souls into this program for the last 10 years or so since we’ve turned the corner are the ones that deserve all the credit,” Meyerle said. “As well as the families and the coaches, too.”

The banners that hang in Diller-Odell’s new gymnasium tell quite a story. The Griffins, past, present and future, are all a part of it.

“It’s a family,” said Vitosh. “We’re bonded and linked for the rest of our lives.”