Haley Cook, who’s spent the last seven seasons as the head coach of the Labette Cardinals volleyball program, is resigning her post and leaving the coaching profession.
Cook accepted a position with the Farha South YMCA in Wichita as a senior program director.
“I wanted to give my family a more normal lifestyle,” Cook said. “I wanted my kids to have opportunities to be involved in sports and things at school. They couldn’t while mom was coaching and dad was working nights. I just wanted to give my family a sense of normalcy within our life.”
The second-longest tenured head coach at Labette, Cook took the job in 2018. She helped navigate the Cardinals through the COVID-19 pandemic, which shifted its 2020 fall season to the spring of 2021.
Labette earned NJCAA Academic Team of the Year honors four times under Cook, including in each of the last three seasons.
“It’s been a rollercoaster,” Cook said. “Outside of wins and losses, there’s been great improvement within the program itself from community involvement to beating conference teams that hadn’t been beaten by Labette in quite a while. There’s a lot of positives. It was a lot of trial-and-error. I still have relationships with past players. It’s been a great ride.”
Developing a coaching tree, each of Cook’s last three assistants are now head coaches — Deardin Kelley at NCAA Division II William Jewell, Kandi Midgett at Coffeyville and Alexis Kapales at Jackson State.
“I have the opportunity to live vicariously through them,” Cook said. “Deardin and Kandi still call me and ask me for advice on how to do things. I still will always have that foot in the door and have volleyball in my life.”
Cook finishes her seven-year tenure with a 44-161 overall record. Her season- high win total was 10 in 2023.
“In 2018, I told them it’d be a 10 year project to get the school where it needed to be with athletes and facilities needing improvements,” Cook said. “We’re trending in the right direction. We have a new facility. We got the court redone this year. We’re starting to get the athletes coming in and making differences. They’re paving the way to the steps of that 10-year goal of big things happening. I’m stopping before that 10-year mark. But hopefully whoever comes in can take it and run.”
Cook’s life has evolved in the seven years she’s spent with Labette as she got married and had two kids. Reflecting on her time with the Cardinals, Cook departs with no regrets.
“Older me would tell younger me that it’s going to be hard,” Cook said. “It’s going to be hard. You’ll have a lot of changes with coaches and players. It will be good, bad and ugly. But it’s going to be worth it. Older me would tell younger me how proud she is of her.”
