Every year for 28 years, Ms. Huntsinger has been the face of Mud Volleyball. She’s in charge of making sure the whole shebang comes together smoother and better every year. In this Q & A she shares some of her vast knowledge on making Mud Volleyball possible.

Q: So how did all this begin?

A: “Mud Volleyball was started 29 years ago by a woman named Fran McNellis, a social studies teacher that wanted to promote social activities that don’t involve drinking alcohol. She was in charge over 20 years ago. When I was still  young, she asked me if I wanted to help, and the following year she said “OK, it’s yours.” So I’ve been involved for 28 years now, but it hasn’t just been me. I have 75 volunteers that help me. Like Caitlin Broadwell’s parents, they’ve been helping since before she [Caitlin] was born. I have several people like that — that have helped for almost two decades.”

Q: How many students are participating this year?

A: “We have about 64 teams, and if you do the math you have about eight kids per team and that’s about 500 students, so that’s about the third of the student body. And what I love about it is every kind of student at LHS is participating, and that’s what I love about Lawrence High is how diverse we are and that any kind of group you can think of has a team, and I think that’s the neatest thing.”

Q: What is the grade breakdown for participation?

A: “I’ve never really done that. We don’t really have that many freshmen teams, but I think it’s harder for them to get organized and haven’t networked as well as the older students have. Some years they will keep their same teams that they had as freshmen and then we have other teams that keep upgrading. It’s kind of interesting for me, but as far as a breakdown goes I think it’s mainly juniors and seniors that play, but there are a whole lot of sophomores and freshmen that play, too, but I don’t know the exact number.”

Q: Have you yourself played Mud Volleyball, and if so how did you like it?

A: “Once in my life I’ve played in a tournament that was not the Lawrence High volleyball tournament over where Michael’s is, and there used to be K-mart there, and they had some ground and they always had Mud Volleyball tournaments. I entered with a group of friends and we competed. It was a blast. We won and everything. But it was one and done. I don’t ever need to play again, but I really enjoy watching other people play.”

Q: So, for the teams that you have, do any people make bets on who they think will win?

A: “You know it’s funny, ‘cause when I get the brackets out, a lot of people fill it out like they would for the Final Four basketball tournament. I seed it like the teams that did really well last year. I kind of get them away from each other in the bracket, and the senior teams play the freshmen teams, but that’s the way things are seeded in a real tournament, and each year I think the older you get the more wins you get.”

Q: Has there been a year when teachers participated?

A: “Every year Lawrence High staff has been extremely supportive of Mud Volleyball, and they field a team every single year. It’s called Staph Infection. So Staph Infection is the Lawrence High teacher team. Then South Junior High teachers usually have a team and call themselves the Old Cougars. We’ve had Central Junior High have a team before and of course they are the Old Mustangs. We have parents that have played. Channel Six has always been real supportive, and sometimes they will field a team, so we don’t have many adult teams, but it’s kind of a free way to get supervision out there to get more adults, and not that you guys need to be supervised. It’s just nice to have older people out there in case something does happen.”

Q: Do you have any goals for bettering Mud Volleyball?

A: “Every single year I just kind of try and sit back and think, ‘OK, what can we do better next year, and we’ve done this for 29 years now, and it really has gotten better every single year. I have those timelines up and there’s a certain time for everything to be done. That way we always try to make good T-shirts or better T-shirts every year, but just making it run smoothly talking to people that participate, if we need to make the games longer or shorter.”

Q:How do you think LHS  will maintain this tradition after you’ve retired?

A: “Lots of apprentices. I have many apprentices and younger teachers and volunteers, and I have to train them because there are a lot of specific ways to do things that go into Mud Volleyball. Mr. [John] Moos, Ms. [Stephanie] Magnuson, those are apprentices, and you know we’re not going to be around much longer. Where trying to train younger teachers and get more younger teachers involved, so we can maintain that tradition. There a lot of little jobs that go into the idea of what’s going on, like setting up the tournament and cleaning up the tournament. We’ve had people from all over the nation ask us about Mud Volleyball, so they can start from there instead of having to making all these mistakes. Somebody from South Carolina this year was wanting to start a Mud Volleyball tradition.”