FAMILY ties may not be necessarily uncommon in sports, but in the case of Petro Gazz, what it’ll soon have at the forefront of its charge is rather exceptional.
It doesn’t happen too often for a father-mother-daughter trio to have active roles in one team. The Van Sickles are about to make that happen come the 2025 PVL Reinforced Conference.
SPIN.ph took the liberty of asking two-time MVP Brooke Van Sickle and her parents Gary and Lisa the million-dollar question many have been asking.
How did it all come together?
The funny thing, quite literally, is how Brooke first floated the idea as a harmless joke that Angels management considered straight away.
“How the initial conversation started was Petro was asking me and MJ [Phillips] if we knew any American coaches. They really wanted to go American-style volleyball. I jokingly was kind of like, ‘Oh, I have my parents,’” she shared.
“My parents coached me my entire life, like all of my fundamentals and everything leading up to college. I was like, kind of at first joking, and then they thought it was the coolest thing and really wanted to buy into it.
“It took off from there and they’ve been in communication for the last couple of months figuring out the small bits and pieces. I’m just super grateful that they’re here.”
The Van Sickles’ balancing act
From head coach Gary and deputy Lisa’s end, the month-long process of considering the Angels’ vacated coaching posts was ‘agonizing,’ but a ‘no-brainer’ at the same time.
They bared how tough it was at first to think about the family they’d be leaving behind in Hawaii, but were eventually able to tie up loose ends with the approval and assist from Lisa’s dad.
In the end, the chance to go full circle with their daughter whom they’ve built as a volleyball player from the ground up was a chance too good to pass on.
“It’ll be wonderful actually. We host her her whole life basically, from young until older, so we know how to put (on) the switch, put the coach hat, put on the parent hat, and she can do the same,” Lisa said.
“We're used to it because we've been coaching her for so long and we know she’s always liked it working with coaching parents, if you’d call it. When we're with her outside of volleyball, we're still her parents who’d catch up and take care of her,” Gary added.
BVS will also take it upon herself, as she always has growing up to draw the line between treating Gary and Lisa as coaches on the court and parents off it.
“Having been their player for so long, it’s just having that separation. They are my parents, but at the end of the day, they’re my coaches. We’re very responsible in the way of just stepping away from that parent-daughter role and getting after it," she said.
“I’m really excited to see what they can do and how they can develop our team. We have all the pieces for this conference, so I’m very excited.
“It’s just so awesome to be around family and everything, especially being in the Philippines and away from Hawaii.”
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