Crees ready to roll as Cyclone head volleyball coach

 HARLAN (Aug. 20) -- In six days, Harlan Community will open the 2021 volleyball season in Adel with a coaching staff that is both new and familiar to the program.
 First-year head coach Elle Crees, an assistant last season, played a key role on back-to-back state champion volleyball and basketball teams at HCHS from 2013-2015.
 First-year assistant coaches Josie Esser and Jacie White are also former Cyclone multi-sport athletes who graduated in 2013 and 2011, respectively.
 Crees - the former Elle Kloewer - was hired for the head coaching position in early June following the resignation of Willie Baughman, who directed the volleyball program the previous four seasons.
 Upon graduating from HCHS in 2015, Crees played two years of volleyball at Grand View University in Des Moines. She finished her college degree at Iowa State University in 2019, then taught for one year at Missouri Valley before accepting a fourth grade teaching position with the Harlan Community Schools last year.
 Crees also coached the junior varsity volleyball team last fall. Now, one year later, she’s anxiously preparing for her first experience running a program.
 “I’m really excited to be in this position because it is something I’ve always dreamed of,” Crees said before Wednesday’s practice. “I never really thought it would happen this soon, but I just feel so blessed that it is here and that we can build some roots.”
 Crees is also excited to work closely with the team’s new assistants. Esser has three years of head coaching experience under her belt at Missouri Valley and White has served three years as the girls head basketball coach at Oskaloosa in addition to helping out with the volleyball program there.
 “They’re both great and they both have head coaching experience, which is so incredible just as mentors and assistant coaches to help me be the coach I want to be through their experiences,” Crees said.
 “They know what it’s like to feel like a champion, to be a champion. They were raised the Cyclone way... I know that we all kind of have the same mentality about the game and things like that, and we played together, which is kind of crazy. It’s cool, too, that we kind of have that trust already. It’s been a few years, but it’s a new kind of trust."

Full story/interview in the August 20 News-Advertiser.