Desiree DeLeon to retire from coaching
ESKO, Minn. (BVM) — Last week, longtime Esko High School girls volleyball coach Desiree DeLeon announced her retirement.
“It’s just time,” DeLeon said. “I have enjoyed it. I have enjoyed my coaches. I have enjoyed my players. I have enjoyed the parents and fans. I just feel at peace with it.”
The decision comes after 17 seasons of coaching varsity volleyball, four at Cook High School and then 13 for the Eskimos. During that time, DeLeon-led teams made five state tournament appearances, and she had over 350 wins and never had a losing season.
“It was really a good run,” DeLeon said.
In a COVID-19-shortened season at the end of 2020, she helped Esko go 9-1. It was a team that she believed could have made it down to Minneapolis for the state tournament. That wasn’t possible, but she was proud of how her girls handled the unprecedented season.
“It’s something that I’ll never forget,” DeLeon said.
A crazy end to an impressive career that began back when DeLeon was attending college at Mayville State University in North Dakota. She was majoring in teaching with a minor in coaching.
“I knew I wanted to coach,” DeLeon said.
An athlete herself she had played both basketball and volleyball in high school as well as volleyball for two years at Vermillion Community College. However, when her playing career ended and she went out to Mayville, she had no preference on what sport she would rather coach.
It just so happened that a local middle school was looking for a seventh grade girls volleyball coach and DeLeon took the job. She coached the team both for seventh grade and eighth grade. She even had a player reach out to her years later to let DeLeon know how her high school career had gone.
“They sent a card,” DeLeon said. “It was fun to get that information.”
Following her graduation from Mayville State, DeLeon and her husband moved to Cook, Minn. where her husband had gotten a job teaching. It was there that she began coaching varsity volleyball.
“I stepped into a program that was very good,” DeLeon said.
DeLeon coached at Cook for four seasons before she stepped away from coaching for a few years before taking on the coaching job at Esko.
“I had good volleyball players but the history of the programs were different,” DeLeon said. “I don’t think we had the history as far as the state tournaments in Esko, but we did have very good athletes.”
That was a constant throughout her tenure as a head coach and it was vital to the overall success each of her teams had. However, even though the wins and trips to the state tournament were memorable, those were never the main for her love of coaching.
“I wanted them to become and I wanted to be part of them becoming competent, strong, positive women,” DeLeon said. “Yes they are going to learn volleyball as we go because that’s what we’re teaching, but in the end we’re not going to play volleyball forever.”
Her success in doing that has been proven by everyone who has reached out to her since she announced she was stepping away from coaching. DeLeon has impacted so many through her coaching over the years and there are a lot of great memories from that time.
“It makes you feel good,” DeLeon said. “It makes you feel like all those years you spent doing it was worth it.”
One in particular that brings a smile to DeLeon’s face is a saying that has stuck with her for years now and was even put on t-shirt by her players. It was created during a practice where the team was struggling to hit the ball in bounds and in that moment DeLeon turned to her team and said, “You cannot hit it to China every time” and it just stuck.
“When you are building relationships with these young women, there is so much fun and joy to be had even when they’re making fun of you,” DeLeon said.
And even though some of the players who have come back to coach with her say she is way easier on the girls now than she was back then, the joy was always there.
