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Dundee-Crown alum Storm making impact in coaching

One benefit of covering high school athletics over the years has been the constant interaction with the crème of the crop when it comes to student-athletes and young people in general.

Back in the late 1990s, Dundee-Crown Kelley Storm certainly fit that bill.

Storm, the daughter of former D-C athletic director Dick Storm, was a former Daily Herald All-Area selection, helping her senior-year team, under the direction of area coaching great Joe Komaromy, to a program-best 26-5 record and a spot in the school's first supersectional since 1984. She left D-C fourth all-time in scoring at 1,062 points and at the time was the only girls basketball player to ever be named to three straight Fox Valley all-area teams.

Thus, I was not shocked one bit when a note came across the palatial Off at College office desk that Storm, now Kelley Lawson, had coached her Quincy (Illinois) Junior High School eighth-grade team to a recent berth in the Illinois Elementary School Class 4A state quarterfinals. The Comets lost 36-20 to Canton-Ingersoll in the quarters at Macon-Meridian High School.

"Our center got hurt in the first 2 minutes of the game," she told me over the weekend. "We fell a part a little bit. It was a perfect storm."

But as they say, one loss does not diminish a season, and in the case of Lawson, two seasons. Quincy finished this year 22-1 and over the last two years ended with a stellar 48-2 mark.

"It's the craziest thing. We've never had any drama," she said. "This has been the perfect team to coach. Everybody gets along. It's a team full of great girls. I couldn't ask for anything more than that."

So what's Lawson been up to since she starred at D-C? A lot, actually. She played on scholarship at Division II Quincy University (graduating in 2002) and had visions of a career in criminal justice (which was her first college degree). With family life in mind, Storm went back and got her teaching certificate in special education where she initially taught special ed math at Quincy Senior High School.

These days, Lawson, married to husband, Rick, for 16 years and the proud mother of three boys ranging in age from 13 down to nine, is in her second year as sophomore dean at Quincy Senior High. She's been at the school for 15 years.

This year marked Storm's eighth as head coach at the junior high school. "I do enjoy it," she said. "It's kind of cool to watch these girls grow up. I have them in seventh and eighth grade and then I will see them at the high school. I have had a chance to watch their careers or catch up with them, even if they stop playing basketball. They will see me at school and tell me about life. I still keep in contact with girls I have previously coached. When you are able to do that you know you have made a connection."

Lawson's coaching staff has an interesting back story. Assistants Lisa Farrell and Jamie Hamby played with Storm at Quincy University. Both of them coached the seventh grade team this year. Eighth-grade assistant Lindsey Klesner, is a graduate of Quincy Senior High. The staff also includes Lindsay Burry (who has moved back to Wisconsin to start nursing school and was commuting back and forth between Wisconsin and Quincy during the playoffs).

"My coaches are great," she said. "They allowed me to be able to do a ton of other family things that I wouldn't have been able to do without them. Because of them, I was able a lot of times to sneak out and get to some of my boys' games. They have done a great coaching job."

Lawson, 39, noted how quickly time has flown by as a coach. "Eight years ago my son was one," she said. "He's grown up with these girls I am coaching. They know him, so that aspect has been fun to watch as well."

After we finished talking, Lawson had some more to say about her team via a text, words that only further enforced the excellence she displayed at D-C still is on full display as a coach.

"It's a team that made my job as their coach easy," she said. "They knew how to have fun, yet get the job done. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have had them for two years and will enjoy watching the amazing things they will do in the future."

Off at College wants your help: Send information and/or statistics on Fox Valley-area athletes playing collegiately to Mike Miazga at mjm890@gmail.com. Winter sports submissions are encouraged.

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