Galena’s Kaesha Walter can be summed up pretty simply by her head coach.
“She’s been a coach’s dream,” said Galena Head Coach Joe Miller. “She’s very humble, very unassuming. She doesn’t brag.”
It’s humility that’s as true as the numbers Kaesha piles up on the stat sheet. The senior doesn’t keep track of her statistics, despite consistently being in the top ten in the state of Missouri for kills, often the top five. Not bad for an athlete standing only 5’4″.
“I’ve been working on my vertical since I was nine or ten,” Kaesha said. “So now it’s up to 30 inches. You don’t always have to be the tallest. You just have to be the smartest.”
Kaesha gives credit to her teammates for making it all happen. “It’s usually high-five my setters first and then my passers because I couldn’t have made the kill without them,” Kaesha said.
Coach Miller says his introverted star has come out of her shell over the last four years.
A good example is the time her best friend tried a new celebration with her. “I used to push her with excitement,” said senior Breeanna Rice. “And she told me to never do that again.”
“Yes she did,” Kaesha added with a laugh. “Then I got mad at her and she hasn’t done it again.”
She’s no longer shy about correcting her coach. “If anybody’s going to give me grief or a hard time now it’s her,” Miller said. “She’ll be the first one to correct me or get on my case about something.”
“She likes to kind of tell him what to do,” Breeanna added, “Kind of boss him around.”
“Sometimes coach is just wrong,” Kaesha added with a laugh.
And after making the state tournament a year ago, hopefully, for Galena’s sake, her coach is right when he says he thinks they can make the Final Four.
With Kaesha, no task is too tall as long as the team plays the smartest.
