Schools
By day and by night
LCA assistant coach Lauren Jenkins is tireless. The volleyball girls are lucky to get her indefatigable help.
By Donny Ndoka –
By day, Lauren Jenkins is a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurse. Also by day, she has four kids. Still also by day, she is LCA’s assistant volleyball coach, driving girls all around Southern California for matches.
By night… nope, forget it, we assume she doesn’t get any sleep.
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“It brings joy to help people,” she says. “We make time for what’s important in our lives. I enjoy being busy; there is always something to do or someone to help. I feel fulfilled doing these things. I look for ways to lighten somebody’s load or bring encouragement.”
Eleven LCA girls are super lucky to profit from her selflessness.
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Lauren Jenkins is part of the recipe for great tasting Lighthouse Christian Academy volleyball. She and fellow RN, Coach Jessica Young, have shepherded the Saints to an unwhipped season. Playoffs start today in Studio City.
Lauren’s mom was a workaholic in the Lighthouse Church. If Pam Sommer (the mom) wasn’t running a Bible study, she was writing and producing a play. If she wasn’t praying or ministering to a sister, she was asking her husband for more kids (she had six).
Coach Lauren got the busy gene.
“My husband helps balance me,” Lauren says. “He works hard so I can be as involved as I am in many areas.”
Her husband, Ben Jenkins, is a detective with the Santa Monica Police Department. Her son Zion is a star football player on the Saints team. Her daughter Jillian is the breakout freshman star for volleyball. She has two littler ones too.
Lauren learned to play at Lighthouse as a student. She got into coaching from a neighborhood mom who started Sunshine Club; she coached her younger sisters. Lauren coached the Lighthouse Church School middle school team, the feeder program for LCA.
“I like the way she pushes us,” says sophomore Karine Keyser. “ It’s not hurtful but strict. It helps us to grow and do better.”
No matter the hard times she’s facing, Lauren always smiles. She always looks for the good.
“Smiling is my defense mechanism,” she says. “If I’m uncomfortable, I’ll smile. If I’m nervous, I’ll smile.”
Lauren works as a registered nurse in NICU at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, a job she’s had for 17 years. She works daytime 12 hour shifts three days a week.
“I love children and babies and the medical field,” she says.
She still makes time for volleyball.
“I love volleyball," she says. "It fulfills that competitive nature that I still have in me.”
Related content: LCA Coach Jessica Young.
About this writer: Donny Ndoka is learning journalism at the Lighthouse Christian Academy of Santa Monica.
