Athlete key player at new school

She was the new kid on the court.

With six seconds left in the playoff game against Moscow High School, Katie Hoye let one sail. The basketball bounced off the backboard and fell through the net.

Just minutes earlier, her teammates’ eyes were welling up with tears of defeat, but as soon as Hoye scored, the girls knew they had been saved.

“It was the best thing that could have happened to me,” said Hoye, a senior at Lakeland High School. “To have the game-winning shot in overtime to go to state … it doesn’t get much better than that. Plus, it helped me prove myself to my team.”

Although she was a veteran on the court, Hoye had come to the Lakeland team with rookie status. When Post Falls Christian Academy closed its doors after Hoye’s junior year, the four-sport athlete was forced to make a move.

She went from the academy, a kindergarten-through-12th-grade school of approximately 250 students, to Lakeland High, which has a senior class that large.

“Going into this year, my main goal was to get a starting spot in volleyball and in basketball, and I’ve achieved that,” Hoye said. But it wasn’t always easy.

“At the very beginning of the volleyball season, it was a huge jump, almost a little overwhelming,” Hoye said, “but I like being pushed more.”

While she wanted to accentuate her athletic abilities, Hoye also wanted to make sure she wasn’t stepping on any toes that belonged to potential teammates.

“I was worried,” she said. “I just wanted to show the coaches what I was capable of, but I didn’t want to work too hard and make the other girls say, ‘Oh, look at the new girl. … She thinks she’s so good.’ I didn’t want them to judge me.”

And it looks like Hoye’s strategy worked, meaning there are satisfied coaches and teammates in all four of her sports: volleyball, basketball, track and tennis.

“For just being at Lakeland for one year, she’s turned out to be one of our senior leaders, and she’s not overboard about it,” said Lakeland track coach Lee Libera. “She just works hard, and the younger kids look up to her. It’s tough to come to a new school as a senior, but she fits in really well.”

It turns out Hoye appreciates Lakeland just as much as Lakeland appreciates her.

Going to Lakeland has “made me realize what I can get out of myself,” Hoye said. “I wasn’t really pushed until now.”

After fall volleyball and winter basketball, Hoye turns her attention to track and tennis – which both happen to fall into one season.

“As an athlete, she’s fairly multitalented,” Libera said. “She’s been beneficial to all the programs here.”

Hoye started playing tennis her junior year and made it to state that same season. But she also loves track, which helps her stay in tiptop shape when she’s not playing volleyball and basketball. Luckily, she didn’t have to choose between tennis and track.

“I usually go to my sprinting coach first, go to get my mark with my jumping coach, go to my throwing coach, and then I run over to the tennis courts,” said Hoye, who runs the medley and the four-by-one, long-jumps and throws the discus in track. “It makes for a good practice.”

Sometimes, the senior gets bogged down by her athletic endeavors, but she just tries to remind herself that it doesn’t get much better than this.

“That’s the worst thing about graduating – going from being a four-sport athlete to who knows what,” she said.

Hoye plans to stick with sports, whether she’s playing them or studying them. She still is deciding whether she wants to study athletic training at the University of Idaho or at Washington State University, where she also would go out for the crew team.

“Right now, I have only a month left of my senior year, and I am trying to get all I can out of it,” Hoye said.