Editor’s note: This story originally published in July 2025 in conjunction with The Palm Beach Post’s Summer Celebration series. It has been updated to reflect Kaiser’s retirement and updated coaching statistics.
Head coach Terri Kaiser hails volleyball as the ultimate team sport, and under her watch, Lake Worth Christian has become the ultimate high school volleyball program in Palm Beach County.
The Palm Beach Post’s “Summer Celebration” series looked at the county’s top sports programs from 2020-25. One didn’t have to look hard to find the roots of Kaiser’s impact on Lake Worth Christian’s community.
A cornerstone figure, in the truest sense.
Before her 37th year at the school — split into two stretches — Kaiser remembered laying pipe in the ground to help expand what was at that point a one-building school.
“We didn’t build the gym until the 90s,” she said. “This is very important: Lake Worth Christian encouraged students first, and athletes followed.”
But when it came time for athletics, Kaiser quickly made her mark.
Kaiser led the Defenders program to five FHSAA state championships (2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2020), six FHSAA state runner-up finishes and more than 800 total wins in nearly four decades as head coach. She announced her retirement as head coach on June 16, 2026 and moved into a director of volleyball administrative role at the school.
Surprisingly, she didn’t start out coaching volleyball.
Looking back at her career as a multi-sport athlete in high school and college, Kaiser admitted that softball was her best sport and is in fact what she started coaching in her first years at Lake Worth Christian.
But then she was asked about coaching volleyball, and a moment’s hesitation transformed over the years into a dynasty-like run perhaps unlike any other in the county.
Part of that is because as the sport has evolved, Kaiser has evolved right along with it.
“Volleyball is one of those sports that has evolved, changed, more than any other sport,” she said, pointing to a number of rule adjustments. “The rules keep changing. Volleyball, in the past 25 years has gone from best two out of three games to three out of five now. If you’re not doing it 12 months out of the year and touching the volleyball and playing the club circuit, you can’t evolve to be that next-level player.”
In her time at Lake Worth Christian, Kaiser has become a coach that surrounds herself with the game throughout the year, and she says that’s made as big a difference as any in helping the program find success.
“I think what’s evolved for Lake Worth Christian volleyball is the consistency, the willingness of me and other people that coach with me in the program to stay involved for the last 25 years in a 12-month program.”
Kaiser’s dedication to the program matches the importance it carries for her, in her heart.
Lake Worth Christian carries a unique sense of community for Kaiser, but it goes deeper than that.
It’s family, in the literal sense.
All four of her kids attended the school from kindergarten through senior year, and all four went to college at Palm Beach Atlantic. While Joy VanDyke remains coaching at Cardinal Newman after coaching for a time with her mother, two live in North Carolina and one lives in Texas, now.
The roots are the same, though, a testament to Kaiser’s depiction of loyalty being the hidden truth behind why the Lake Worth Christian volleyball program has been so successful.
“I think loyalty speaks a lot,” Kaiser said, who then took a moment to reflect on all of the players of the last 25 years and beyond that had won The Post’s Player of the Year recognition.
“Everyone, if you look at the list, they pretty much all were at Lake Worth Christian for longer than two years,” she said. “They didn’t just come in when the program was good. They came into the program from the beginning. Their ‘claim to fame’ — is that a good phrase? — would be, they were loyal. They were consistent. They stayed. And that’s different than what you have in the world right now.”
The idea of family extends to those players she’s coached, too.
Just before the start of the 2024 season, Kaiser was forced into a different kind of fight. Her breast cancer, first diagnosed years earlier, returned after nearly a decade in remission, presenting a new challenge away from the court.
The diagnosis came as a shock to a family and program that had long rallied around others through Lake Worth Christian’s annual “Volley for the Cause” pink-out match. This time, the support turned inward, as the community Kaiser helped build mobilized behind her.
Kaiser framed the fight the same way she has approached decades on the sideline: as another battle that requires a plan, patience and resilience. And just like in volleyball, she didn’t face it alone.
Cardinal Newman head coach Joy VanDyke, Kaiser’s daughter and a fellow cancer survivor, paired with her mother to put on a “pink-out” match every year since the two brought the idea to Palm Beach County in 2008.
Alex Peterman covers high school sports for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at apeterman@gannett.com.
Girls Volleyball Player of the Year winners (2000-25)
Palm Beach County girls volleyball state championship (2000-25)
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: How Terri Kaiser built Palm Beach County’s best volleyball program
Reporting by Alexander Peterman, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Alexander Peterman, Palm Beach Post | USA TODAY Network
