Lauren Goehring Cost
Born: August 6, 1982 (Lincoln, NE)
Graduated: Fossil Ridge (TX) H.S., 2000 / Kansas State University, 2004

Lauren Goehring Cost is humble -- humble to the point where she picks out areas of weakness more easily than areas of strength, something she says made her a good volleyball player.

“I could always think of what I needed to work on and worked on it,” she said. “I always had something to get better at.”

Growing up, Goehring Cost said her parents put her in every sport available--soccer, softball, basketball--just to try different things. “My parents obviously were supportive and pushed me in just the right ways to be the athlete I became,” she said.

She began playing volleyball in the third grade at a YMCA in Lincoln, Nebraska. A family move to Texas meant more heat and longer outdoor seasons, and volleyball was the only sport that stuck.

Goehring Cost says her favorite memories of the sport include goofing around with her teammates, who doubled as friends. She calls playing on the youth national team a “pretty incredible experience.”

Goehring Cost caught the attention of college coaches by the time she was in eighth grade. Volleyball had grown to be something bigger than a fun, athletic outlet: it became a doorway to the college education of her choice. By the tenth grade, she had received letters of interest form fourteen Division I schools.
Her ultimate goal was to the best volleyball player she could be so when a K-State coached turned to her during a game on her official visit to the school and announced, “Lauren, we’ll make you a great player here,” she was all in.

Goehring Cost reached the pinnacle of her performance at K-State, and she looks back on the time she spent with her coaches and teammates fondly. In 2001, she was the only team member to start and play in all 28 matches. In 2003, she was named a member of the First-team All-American selection and Big XII Player of the Year. In both years, she had triple-triple seasons. In 2004, she graduated from K-State with a degree in management and operational management.

In 2007, head coach Susie Fritz said Goehring Cost “is probably the best middle blocker in the history of Kansas State volleyball.” Six years later in 2013, she was inducted into the K-State Athletics Hall of Fame, where her name still dots the record books. With 1,212 kills, she remains in the school’s all-time top ten. She is also in the top ten ranks with a career hitting percentage of .354 and 380 block assists.

Today, she lives in Austin, Minnesota, and is married with four daughters. But she is still passing on the lessons she learned as a player to the next generation of volleyball players and continues to coach high school athletes in the sport. Goehring Cost said coaching presents its own challenges, but also the opportunity to show young athletes how to take their sport to the next level and try new things.

Lauren Goehring Cost’s main drive was to continually improve. That drive took her all over the country and today, brings her to the stage as she is inducted for her contributions to her sport in the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame.

By Rachel Hogan