Lake Stevens’ Hoglund named state 4A Volleyball Coach of the Year

Published 10:00 am Tuesday, December 30, 2025

LAKE STEVENS — It’s no secret that any high school athlete would want to win a state championship. Reaching the pinnacle after months, and in many cases years, of hard work is a self-gratifying feeling any high-level athlete dreams for themselves.

But for Lake Stevens volleyball, which perennially carries realistic state title aspirations, the players wanted to win the championship for more than just themselves. They wanted to win for their head coach, Kyle Hoglund.

Hoglund has been part of the Vikings program for nearly 20 years, and has led it for the past 10. As the program continually fell short of reaching the mountaintop over the past few years, the motivation to finally get it done centered primarily around the coach who put everything into helping his team get there.

“(Hoglund) deserves so much more than just a state championship,” said Laura Eichert, the Vikings’ star outside hitter who was recently named The Herald’s All-Area Volleyball Player of the Year. “He changed so many players’ lives for the positive that I just wanted, more than anything, to bring him home a state championship, just because of how special of an impact he’s made on everyone.”

If there was ever a year to finally get it done, it was 2025. Led by Eichert as well as four-year varsity players Olivia Gonzales and Kam Strom, Lake Stevens went undefeated in the regular season (excluding tournaments) and postseason, dropping just one set all year leading up to the championship match.

Facing the reigning 4A champions Curtis, who had eliminated them in the semifinals last year, the Vikings fell behind 2-0 before executing a thrilling comeback to secure the state title with a 3-2 victory. It was a Hollywood ending to a dream season.

But every theater-goer knows to stick around during the credits. In addition to winning his first state title as a head coach, Hoglund was selected as the Washington State Volleyball Coaches Association 2025 4A Coach of the Year.

“For the last 10 years being the head coach and only missing the state tournament because of COVID, it’s interesting to have the group of girls that keep coming in and want to perform and want to achieve at a high level,” Hoglund said. “And keep putting in the work, and keep trusting in the coaches, and we seem to get there every year. It’s an amazing ride every time.”

Prior to arriving at Lake Stevens, Hoglund was a player himself, but he got tendinitis in both knees while playing for Golden West College in Huntington Beach, Calif. Robbed of his ability to play, Hoglund turned to coaching. More than winning awards or championships, Hoglund said he got into it to serve as a positive role model for his players and show them “the right way of life.”

That said, winning is still very much the goal every season. As he molded the Lake Stevens program into his own, Hoglund constructed the pillars with life outside of high school sports in mind. One of the biggest hallmarks of the Hoglund-led Vikings is fitness. The conditioning Lake Stevens volleyball undergoes sounds like hyperbole. The highlights — or maybe ‘lowlights’ if you’re the one training — include doing 150 burpees as a warm-up during summer workouts, and mile-long runs up and down the bleachers of Vikings Stadium.

Like in life at large, there’s only so many things an athlete can control, and Hoglund views conditioning as a major one.

“I want these girls who really want to go and play at the next level that this is just a small sample of what it’s really like,” Hoglund said. “I’ve had former players call and say, ‘thank you’ for what we’ve done, because now they understand and move on. We have players now after winning state, they realize that the conditioning matters, and it’s tough. There’s few controllables you can control in the world. For an athlete, one of them is how you can condition, how much you can be in there, and so why not make sure that is something that is taken care of?

“So we do a great job with that. … We maybe even run more than our own soccer team here at school does, but a lot of that is getting the mind to tell the body what to do.”

The other big hallmark comes from building a strong mental foundation. The team conducts a summer book club reading materials about mental toughness, and the players will write in journals throughout the season to help stay in tune with the mental side of the game. The journaling started when Hoglund was an assistant under Amy Wiklund, but has since developed into an integral process.

Encouraged to put their thoughts and feelings into words, the players and coaches establish a better level of understanding with each other. There may be moments where Hoglund realizes he has to give a player some grace if she is going through a tough time, and other moments where he can push harder to help players reach goals they set out to achieve. With more understanding and connection, the team thrived.

“Going up to our state championship game was a fairly easy road, in some respects, but you saw that what we did at the state tournament wasn’t easy,” Hoglund said. “The championship was not an easy way to win, but the girls never wavered on themselves. They cared about each other, trusted each other, and a lot of that goes back to what we do during the summer and all year long.”

Even before the results justified the process, it fully resonated with the players.

“(Hoglund) is probably the most mentally aware person you can ever meet,” Gonzales said. “He will always ask you how your day is. You can tell he genuinely cares, and it really has an effect on the team chemistry, because everyone just feels so much closer because we’re so vulnerable with each other all the time. And that was like a huge part in winning, is that we were really trying to ‘out-team’ their team because we just had so much love for each other.”

More than ever, the 2025 Lake Stevens volleyball team represented a strong group, both mentally and physically. Hoglund described this year as a “drama-free” season, which he said is not often the case. As much as he helped each player grow on and off the court, this year’s team helped him as a coach with working on the “finer details” of the game.

As the weeks since winning the championship pass, and the offseason burpees and bleacher miles come nearer, it will become harder for Hoglund to turn the page. The program will graduate six seniors, including Eichert, Gonzales and Strom, which will mark the end of an era and task Hoglund with building up a new one. But Hoglund will cross that bridge when he gets there.

“I don’t even know if I’ve really thought about (next year) yet,” Hoglund said. “I’m still trying to enjoy the moment.”

After winning a state title and Coach of the Year, why wouldn’t he?