Nicole Coates did not like to be carried around when she was an infant. But she did like to jump. Bea and Gary Coates would set their baby girl in a device called “Johnny Jump Ups,” and let her jump to her little heart’s content.
“She didn’t mind you sitting and rock her, but she didn’t like to be carried,” Bea Coates said. “I had things to do, so I would put her in those jump-ups and she’d just sit there and jump and she liked doing it. So we just let her go ahead and do it.
“I think she would have been a jumper anyway, but that just trained her. She loved doing it.” The Coates also got their daughter introduced to the start of spiking volleyballs with balloons.
“She picked it up and started batting balloons. And she just keep on batting and we’d see how long she could keep it up,” Bea Coates said with a laugh. Bea Coates said her daughter started walking by five months and her late husband, Gary, the PHS cross country and track coach, had the idea of her getting into the Guinness World Records for being the youngest to complete a 50-yard dash.
“I don’t know if he sent it in or not, but he said he was going to,” she said. That early training led to one of the most elite athletic careers in Bureau County by either a female or male. She would go on to be a state qualifier in four sports at Princeton High School, leading the Tigresses’ volleyball team to the 1990 Class A State championship.
She took her game to the next level to compete for the Notre Dame Irish volleyball team. Coates, now Mrs. Skipp Schaefbauer, is the Executive Director of the Illinois Elementary School Association where she has served since 1999.
For all of her accomplishments, Schaefbauer earns induction into the Bureau County Sports Hall of Fame. By all accounts, Schaefbauer is regarded as the best player in the 50-year history of the PHS volleyball program, if not all of Bureau County and beyond. She remains the program’s all-time kills leader 34 years later with 911 kills.
While a bit under sized for an outside hitter at 5-foot-7, Schaefbauer made up for it by being able to jump out of the gym. Former PHS volleyball coach Rita Placek, who was also inducted into the Bureau County Sports Hall of Fame, said Schaefbauer was a special talent. “She was just a natural athlete,” Placek said.
“She participated in so many different sports. I think that really enhanced her skill. She was blessed with great jumping ability.
I used to kind of compare her to Michael Jordan. She looked so agile in everything that she did. When she jumped she just kept going up and up like a feather and landed very softly.
“She had God-given talents and worked hard at her game as well.” Shannon (Sapp) Killion moved to Princeton for her junior year to take part in the Tigresses’ state championship run and it didn’t take her long to notice the special talents Schaefbaeur had. “Nicole was the kind of player who could do everything.
She had a calming presence on the court. She passed well, set well, served well, but as anyone who watched her play could tell you, watching her hit was a thing of beauty,” Killion said. “We benefitted from her talents in many ways, most obviously because most other teams didn’t have an answer for her.
But we also benefitted because we got to play defense against her every day in practice. We weren’t intimidated by the other teams’ big hitters because we were attempting to block and dig up Nicole’s hits all season.” While she made her name in volleyball at PHS, Schaefbaeur also played basketball and was a state qualifier in tennis and track and even helped her late father’s cross country team qualify for state.
“She was tired. Her long distance running was a quarter mile and she thought that was like a mile. She was, ‘Are you kidding me?’ You want me to run two miles and something?’” Bea Coates said.
Schaefbauer was a two-time state qualifier in track, placing sixth in the 200-meters as a freshman and fourth in the 400-meter and seventh in the long jump as a junior. She would have made it down a third year to state, but did not compete as a senior after signing to play volleyball for Notre Dame. She thrived with her busy schedule.
In a 2016 Shaw Local interview, she said it helped her for her future endeavors. “It really built some skills that I use to this day in my life,” Schaefbauer said. “You become very organized and very efficient in your time.
I believe those are skills you had to have with the schedule I had. It was very beneficial to me then, it helped me in college and it’s certainly helpful to me now with my job.” Schaefbauer was recruited by multiple colleges to play volleyball, including Duke, Arizona, Butler and Illinois State, but when she walked on to the Notre Dame campus she knew she was at home.
“When you get to the collegiate level you hope to play against those big-name schools. It was a lot of fun,” she said. The Fighting Irish reached the Elite Eight in 1993 with a 27-8 record, their furthest advancement, and a Sweet 16 berth and a 33-4 record in 1994 when Schaefbauer was a senior captain.
She etched her name in the Irish record books when she graduated. Schaefbauer and her husband, Skipp, a former Illinois State basketball player, have passed on their love for sports, and genes, to their two daughters. McKenna is a sophomore member of the tennis team at the University of Illinois while Isabella is a fifth-year senior for the Youngstown State University volleyball team.
Bea Coates is not surprised to see her daughter turn her childhood’s passion into a career. “It’s amazing what you learn, even though you don’t know it,” Coates said. Schaefbauer was inducted into the ITCCCA Hall of Fame (Track and Cross Country Coaches Association) as well as Shaw Media’s Illinois Valley Hall of Fame, both individually, and with her PHS volleyball team in 2023, which was previously inducted into the Bureau of County Sports Hall of Fame (2020).
The Bureau County Sports Hall of Fame was formed in 1995 as part of the BCR’s Tribute to Sports program. While the Tribute to Sports was discontinued in 2005, the Hall of Fame was reinstituted in print in 2016. * All-State volleyball player at PHS * State qualifier in tennis, track, cross country * Played volleyball at Notre Dame * Serves as Executive Director of IESA * Illinois Valley Sports Hall of Fame * ITCCCA Hall of Fame.
