NORTH MUSKEGON – Bob Eacker and his daughter, Kami Eacker, have been sharing a love of volleyball for years, since Kammi was a little girl.

But their on-court partnership really began at North Muskegon High School in 2012, when Bob was the head coach and Kammi was a senior on the team, and the Norse made a long run in the state tournament.

Kammi graduated in 2013 and moved on to play at Muskegon Community College. Bob took over the volleyball team at Muskegon Catholic Central for two years, and Kammi joined him as assistant coach while she played at community college volleyball.

That part of their partnership ended in 2016, when Kammi moved on to Ferris State University and Bob ended his career as a head coach.

But the Eacker story still had chapters to be written.

Kammi graduated from college and became the head coach of the Muskegon High School varsity volleyball team in 2019. Before she accepted the job, she checked with her dad to make sure he would agree to be her assistant.

“When Muskegon called and asked me to take the job, I said I had to make a few phone calls first,” Kammi said. “I called my dad and said I was only going to do this if you’re in the boat first, and he said ‘I’m already rowing.’”

That was an easy decision for Bob, because he loves working with his daughter, and he’s a Big Red at heart. He graduated from Muskegon in 1987 and has been broadcasting Big Red football and basketball games on radio station WVIB  for the past 12 years.

Besides, he thought his daughter was a natural head coach.

“I always told her I thought she would be a great coach, so when the opportunity came for her to be one, and she asked if I wanted to be part of it, I said sure,” Bob said.

The Eackers put a lot of work into that challenge, trying to build a solid volleyball program at a school where it’s never been very successful. The Big Red girls only won a few matches with Kammi and Bob on the bench, but they say they got a lot out of the experience.

Last spring their coaching partnership came full circle when Kammi got the chance to return to North Muskegon and coach volleyball at her alma mater. Her dad came with her, again as assistant coach, and together they are having the best season of their joint coaching career. The Norse are having a very good year and are in the hunt for a West Michigan Conference championship.

That goal will be tested on Tuesday when the Norse visit Whitehall in a battle for first place in the conference.

For Kammi, the opportunity to coach at the school where she played, and was apparently pretty good, is a dream come true.

Just how good was she as a high school player?

“I don’t know,” Kammi said when she was asked that question. “It feels kind of funny talking about myself.”

“She was All-Conference,” her dad interjected.

“And All-Area and All-Region,” Kammi quickly added with a grin.

Kammi admits that it’s fun to be winning again, after struggling with the upstart Muskegon program for the past two years.

“I’m very competitive,” she said. “I love to compete and win. The week before I interviewed for this job I gave one of my best friends a tour of the school, and it ended in the gym. I remember saying how cool it would be to be able to play here one more time. A week later I was being interviewed.

“It was really cool to play here, and now I have my chance to put my own little spin on it.”

Infatuation with state volleyball finals

The Eackers have always had an infatuation with the Michigan high school volleyball state finals.

The story has its roots in Bob’s career as the lakeshore sports writer for the Grand Rapids Press. He covered all kinds of high school sports, and would take Kammi with him when she was small. They both fell in love with volleyball that way.

Bob also had a longtime attachment to Fruitport High School, because his father had taught there for decades and he knew many of the families. So when the Fruitport volleyball team, under former coach Dan Potts, made three runs to the state finals in 2001-2003, Bob and Kammi traveled to see the Trojans battle it out every year.

Fruitport lost in the finals all three years, a fact that was difficult for young Kammi to deal with at the time.

“Those years were filled with Fruitport heartache,” Bob said. “One year they lost to Marysville in the finals again, and Kammi was OK while we were leaving, but when we got to the parking ramp she just started crying, sobbing and sobbing. I felt bad for her, and I also thought, this kid really loves volleyball. Here she is crying for a school she doesn’t even go to.”

The trip to the state finals became an annual  tradition for the Eackers, whether a Muskegon area team was involved or not.

In 2012, when Bob was coaching North Muskegon and Kammi was a senior  player, they thought they might have a chance to actually be on the court for the state finals. The Norse were very good that year, and advanced all the way to the Class C regional finals before losing a very close match to eventual state champion Morley-Stanwood.

“That stung pretty bad,” Kammi said. “That added fuel to the fire. It made me wont to be the one coaching on the court, helping other girls to realize their dream.”

The Eackers had no illusions about making the state finals when they coached the Muskegon Big Reds, at least any time soon. They said the  players were enthusiastic, but winning has never been a tradition in the program, so they were basically working from scratch.

“We only had a handful of wins,” Kammi said. “It was not an established program. That was my goal, to start to bring it up. There are girls there that love the sport. Coaching at Muskegon was never about the wins. It was about building the program and building the confidence of those girls.”

The Muskegon experience allowed Kammi to adjust to being a head coach, after serving as her dad’s assistant. Bob said she took charge right away, and he didn’t mind the role reversal at all.

“She made that program hers, and in that two years she learned a lot,” Bob said. “There was no question she was running the program and making the decisions.”

Kammi and Bob expected to be back at Muskegon this season, until the North Muskegon opportunity came along.

“I saw it posted,” Kammi said. “I wasn’t necessarily thinking about leaving Muskegon, but then I had a couple phone calls with some old coaching mentors of mine, and they were telling me I should look at that, that it would be me going home. I felt like the universe was pushing me that way. So I applied and had an interview, and an hour later they called and offered me the job. I think it was 59 minutes, to be exact.”

Again she asked her dad to join her as assistant coach, and this time it was more difficult decision, because of his ties to the Big Red athletic program. But in the end the partnership won out, and Bob agreed to join Kammi with the Norse this season.

“it was a tough decision,” he said. “We really had a good time at Muskegon. We enjoyed coaching the kids there, and I had been a part of the program though broadcasting. I enjoy being around Muskegon any time, in any sport. But we are kind of a team, and we’ve been a team for a long time. We’ve had a lot of adventures together. She was even my sideline reporter for Big Red radio broadcasts. We’re a package deal.”

So far the deal is working out great for the Eackers and the Norse. The team is 16-10-2 overall and 5-0 in West Michigan Conference play. Whitehall is also 5-0, and one of those teams will fall into second place after their match on Tuesday night.

Several Norse players are having great individual seasons. Junior Natalie Pannucci has 208 kills on the season, which ranks near the top among local players. Sophomore Sami Baker is tops in the area with 509 assists.

Pannucci is the team leader in blocks with 31, senior Megan Houseman leads in digs with 172 and senior Molly Stewart leads in aces with 39.

“I have greatest group of kids around,” Kammi said about her players. “They are all nice, hard-working kids. They are always here before me for practice, and they always want to stay late to work on things. They buy into what we’re giving them. It’s been really fun to build a good relationship with them. They feel comfortable coming to us and saying that they want to try this or that. It’s not a one-sided thing, like us always telling them what to do. We get a lot of feedback from them, and that makes it fun.”

Bob said the Norse girls are hungry to win, because that seems to be the pattern for girls teams at the school, starting with the girls soccer team, which won a state championship in the spring.

“They want to be good, they want to be successful,” he said. “As a group they are very competitive and want to win. We just have to fine tune them.”

Of course Kammi and Bob would love it if their annual trip to the state volleyball finals involved their team – perhaps even as soon as this November.

“I really do think this team can make a deep run,” Kammi said. “Division 3 is wide open for the taking, and volleyball is one of those sports where anybody could beat anybody. I don’t think rankings or being favored tells the whole story. These girls have something magical together, it’s really something. The best part is they truly believe they can make a deep run and go to Battle Creek.”

Regardless of what happens on the court, coaching volleyball has already had a profound effect on Kammi. The experience recently convinced her to go back to college and get her teaching certification, so that she can work with kids on a full-time basis.

“I just figured out that I love working with kids,” she said. “Relationship building is my favorite part of coaching. I really love connecting with them, and I’ve always loved the school environment myself, so it just seems like a natural fit to be in school full time.”