By Hailey Caughron
Every activity, regardless of its style, has a coach; however, not every activity is fortunate enough to have two coaches who have worked together for years. The One Act program, and now the Louisville Speech Team are rare in that both of their coaches have not only worked together for years but also acted on stage alongside one another.
Erik Quam and Jamion Biesterfeld have been the directors of the One Act program for six years. Biesterfeld has been an assistant coach of the speech team for seventeen years. In the summer of 2024, Quam decided he wanted to apply for the head coach position of the speech team.
Quam stated, “A lot of the other schools in our area that we compete with in One Act have a lot of synchronicity between their one act and speech programs, and I felt that it would be nice for our students to have that as well.”
In the past four years, this is the third speech coach that Louisville has acquired. There was a lot of panic for the team when the former coach announced that she was leaving. The current members had already lost one coach a year and a half earlier, and at the time, they didn’t know who would take over.
Senior Speech Team member Emma Renner recalled, “I remember having a feeling of dread and anxiety once she told us she was switching schools. It was going to be our senior year, and the team is made up of primarily seniors, so we were really worried about how our final year would play out. I felt instant relief once Erik told us he was stepping into that position.”
While the Speech Team has seen many changes over nearly the past two decades, there has been one constant: assistant coach Jamion Biesterfeld. Biesterfeld has been coaching longer than most of the faculty at LHS, but he’s faced many challenges and changes, especially since the head coach hasn’t stayed constant.
Jamion stated, “Well, I learned everything from the first coach, Krause. I relied on him a lot, so when he left, I had to step up and fill in those areas that I usually relied on him for. It’s been a challenge for sure, but it’s been fun.”
A few years back, a now Louisville Alumni, Jacob Peacock, started referring to Erik and Jamion as “Mom and Dad” during the One Act season. Erik was referred to as “Mom” because he’s the more empathetic, punctual, and OCD coach. Jamion was referred to as “Dad” because of his dry humor, tough love, and sometimes cranky temperament. This “joke” has continued years later and still is alive among the kids involved in the theatre programs. They truly are the perfect “couple,” and they both recognize that.
When asked about his relationship with his “stage wife,” Jamion replied, “Erik and I knew what we wanted to accomplish, but we also knew that it wasn’t going to be the same as the previous admin and coaches. But we worked really well together. Erik is very structured and I’ve learned things from him, and I think he’s learned a lot from me as well. He’s kind of the Yin to my Yang.”
These two men have done extraordinary things not only for the LHS theatre departments but with the kids involved in them. Just six years ago when they took over, they could barely find students to audition for roles, but as of 2024, they have grown the One Act troupe to around eighty students, making it the largest student-participated activity at Louisville. In just the few months they’ve been coaching speeches together, they’ve already made milestones. The 2025 speech team currently is bigger than it was four years ago and has its best record as a team in over four years. Recently, the speech team won their conference, which was an insanely proud moment for everyone because Raymond Central has consecutively won the Nebraska Capitol Conference since 1982.
Erik and Jamion have had the same goals for each season. Quam said, “Our goal has always been to make sure that our students had an appreciation and education for speech and theatre and the craft of it, and that it was something that they could take with them throughout their lives, and I feel like we’ve done a pretty good job at doing that.”
They not only want to introduce theatre to students, but they want to introduce a love and passion for theatre. In a small, C-1 school of merely two-hundred students, in the last four years, the One Act program has grown from barely thirty-five, to nearly eighty students involved, and seven students have gone on to pursue either a major or minor in theatre arts. Those students would not have found their passions or talents in theatre without having coaches and directors who had the passion and patience to teach it to high school students.
Every single student who gets the privilege of being coached by “Mom and Dad” will remember the impact they made on them for the rest of their lives, and LHS is truly lucky to have these men as a part of their faculty.