When Christy and Andrea Johnson say they’ve been around volleyball their whole lives, they mean it literally.

Coach Lorri Johnson brought Andrea to a volleyball tournament the day after delivering her. Older sister Christy got her introduction to the state tournament as a 4-month old.

Now a senior on her mother’s Soddy-Daisy volleyball team, she and Andrea are still spending most of their time in the gym, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I definitely have not had to force it on them,” Coach Johnson said. “Andrea was 4 years old doing blocking drills, trying to hit the bottom of the net. She wanted to be on my depth chart of setters. I had to put her name on there. Christy has been coaching people since she was little bitty. Both of them just picked it up.”

The Johnsons are one of three mother-daughter combinations who will be in action at the District 6-AAA tournament Monday. Ooltewah junior Libby Peigen and Red Bank sophomore Kalyn Helton will also be coached by their mothers, Elaine Peigen and Christel Helton.

For Helton, whose younger daughter Ansley is an eighth-grade player, the opportunity to coach her daughters helped lead her back to the sport after taking some time away from it.

“Both of them said they wanted to play for me, so that was definitely a big part of it,” she said. “Coaching takes up so much time anyway that it’s a nice reward to be able to share that with your daughter. I would enjoy coaching no matter what, but it’s such a bonus to have them with me.”

Like the Helton girls, Libby Peigen was a continual presence around her mother’s teams throughout her childhood. Whether she was watching a match, hitting balls during practice or sitting on the team bench, the time spent around volleyball helped her grow to love the sport.

“I remember when I was little, if there was a tournament I couldn’t go to, I would sit at home sulking and cry at the dinner table,” she said. “Any time I got to go, I’d be so happy to be with my mom and all the other girls.”

Now her mother is happy to have Libby on the court. Like many coaches’ kids, she, Kalyn, Christy and Andrea have become successful players not just as a result of their talent but also because of their knowledge of the game and their experience around it.

“All Libby ever wanted was to be like the big girls,” Coach Peigen said. “I think being around the players we’ve had at Ooltewah has inspired her to want to be as good as they were. She was a good soccer player, too, but Libby just loves volleyball. She’s always had the desire. She’s a good leader on the court, and I think she’s very smart with the ball.”

The relationships aren’t without their challenges, however, for the moms as well as for their daughters. All three coaches admitted to a tendency to be harder on their daughters than the other players. For the daughters, the difficulty sometimes is in separating the coach from the mother.

“It has its good and bad elements,” Coach Johnson said. “On the positive side is just seeing them enjoy the game. The negative is that sometimes they want to talk back to Mom rather than Coach. They want to question things and push the limits sometimes. But all in all, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Neither would the players. In fact, three of them said they want to follow in their mothers’ footsteps and become volleyball coaches.

“Having grown up around it, I’ve seen her coach and how much the girls love her, and it’s an honor to be able to play for her,” Libby Peigen said. “I wouldn’t choose any other coach.”

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