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On May 8 at 2:59 a.m., the newest Cerritos College volleyball recruit made their appearance. Falcon head coach Kari Hemmerling and husband Brad welcomed Abby Laine Hemmerling to their family and joins big sister Drew Jemma Hemmerling, who was born September 16, 2018.
"We found out on Drew's 1st birthday (that we here having a second child)," said Hemmerling, who will begin her fifth season as the Falcons head coach. "Our first thought was, 'holy crap we're going to have two kids under the age of 2!' But I grew up with my brother only 16 months older than me and we are best friends, so I was really excited my kids would have a similar experience."
Not only did Hemmerling add to her family, assistant coach Katie Roberts is right on her heels. Roberts, who is expecting her second son (Hudson Dean) on July 9th, already has a two-year old son named Liam. Both coaches joked that they were building their own beach doubles team. Hemmerling even stated that in the next 18 years, she hopes that the Falcons have a men's volleyball team and would love to have both of Roberts sons playing for her.
Said Roberts, "If we could convince our husbands, we could start working towards creating our own teams! Kari can get the women's team ready while I work on building the men's program. But we are so excited to add Abby to our Falcon family! Both Kari and I grew up with parents who coached volleyball at the community college level and loved being raised in the gym. It's great to see the tradition being carried on to the next generation."
Hemmerling, whose father is Irvine Valley College women's volleyball coach Tom Pestolesi, started their program in 1991 and is the only coach in the program's history. Roberts' mother is Margaret Bos, who played volleyball and basketball at Long Beach City College and Cal State Dominguez Hills. She also spent time as the head volleyball coach at LBCC and spent 15 seasons as an assistant there.
A gym rat her entire life, Hemmerling was influenced by one of her club players, Andrew McSweeney, when naming her older daughter, Drew. McSweeney is a red-shirt freshman on the UC Santa Barbara volleyball team.
"The name Drew was inspired by one of the boys I used to coach in club when I was coaching for 949," explained Hemmerling. "I had coached Andrew McSweeney every year from the time he was 13-18 years old and he and his family are some of my most favorite people still. He goes by 'Drew' and I really liked that name for a girl." Hemmerling and McSweeney were part of National Championship team, as well.
It was a much different, and surprising selection process when coming up with the name for their latest addition.
"And we got Abby from Drew!," continued Hemmerling. "One day Drew walked up to me, kissed my belly, and said, 'hi baby Abby!'. Brad and I both looked at each other like... who is Abby? And for 2-3 months Drew only called her baby sister Abby.... so we went with it."
The addition of a second young child will definitely change the dynamic of the day-to-day lifestyle. Hemmerling said she will look to her mom, who is retiring on August 1st, and her dad, as just the right amount of help needed. She said her mom is excited to spend more time with the kids and her services will be utilized to the fullest.
But with the uncertainty of an upcoming volleyball season, everything could change once again. But Hemmerling remains optimistic.
"At this point my opinions don't really matter," said Hemmerling. "I wish we could start our summer class like normal - in person on June 22nd - like we have been planning on. But I understand how many moving parts there are to this pandemic and what our new normal and protocol might be. I really am hoping that if it's an abbreviated season, it's still giving the girls as close to a full schedule as possible. (Playing) 75-80% of a full season is still worth it to me, but anything less than that is not fair to the student-athletes."
After a few difficult seasons, Hemmerling said she is ready to get the season started and turn things around.
"We want to stay healthy and make sure we come back in a fashion that doesn't overwhelm the athletes," added Hemmerling. "With so much time missed this spring, I feel like a lot of coaches are going to try to do too much too fast. I want to make sure we come back in great physical shape so that we can really focus on just volleyball and not having to get into shape and get better at volleyball at the same time. So right now, the goal is to be able to have a team practice and we will go on from there. Don't want to get my hopes of competing up too high!! But, we'd like to put ourselves in position to be a playoff team."
Until then, Hemmerling will enjoy honing the skills of her recruiting class of 2036 and 2038.