Credit to Tasia Lowe

Knightline preforms Hip Hop routine at basketball game on Nov. 25, 2025.

One of the strongest bonds that someone will have in their life is their bond with their family. When it comes to sports, they are there to support you and cheer you on at every event. Parents have a way of supporting and teaching lessons when it comes to sports. Some kids even get lucky enough to have them as their own coach. For Knightline co-captain Nicole Knop, she experiences this everyday with her mom Stacy Knop as the head coach of Knightline, creating a special connection when it comes to her mother.

“It’s nice to have her as a resource for sure,” Nicole said. “When there is any question about anything it is nice to be able to ask her on our own time and not take up the team’s time.”

Stacy Knop, FHN’s Behavior Support Specialist, has been coaching Knightline for three years. She brought the program back from hiatus in 2023, when her daughter Nicole was an incoming freshman at the school.

“We went to sign [Nicole] up for the dance team and I found no information except for a job hiring,” Stacy said. “I didn’t know if anyone would apply so I thought why not.”

With no other applicants, the easy choice for the athletic director was to make Stacy Knop the Head Coach of the new program. With prior dance experience under her belt, her goal was to create a positive and improving environment for the girls to be a part of, and just overall a place where the girls could have fun.

“I just love all of the small comments and weird conversations that I have with the girls,” Stacy said. “It’s just always a really good group of girls.”

“She just called me and said she was coaching and asked if I wanted to do it, so of course I said yes,” Giancola said. “The team chemistry is just awesome and it’s awesome getting to coach alongside my sister.”

Giancola and Stacy being coaches and sisters creates a relationship that many other coaches cannot relate too. Some coaches may bicker over who is right and who is wrong when it comes to their ideas, but for the sisters, they have a mind like one.

“Stacy and I never feel like we are stepping on each other’s toes,” Giancola said. “We even have a good cop, bad cop situation, where if she is the mean coach I can be the good coach, and vice versa.”

The two even have a similar mind when it comes to Nicole being on the team. She is the connecting piece for Stacy and Toni when trying to connect with young high school girls, and just brings the connection between the girls to the coaches who just
want the best for the team.

“Stacy is like a second mom not only to me, but I know a lot of the other girls on the team as well,” junior Julia Kreifels said. “She is always there to talk to us about literally anything with no judgment which I know a lot of players can’t do with their coaches.”

With the dance season still going on, the coaches have goals of improvement,  especially with the new additional trip that the team will be making. Later in the year, Knightline will head to nationals and compete for national titles across the country. With this being the first year of this event for the team, learning what it is like will be very important for success in next years’ team as well. Keeping next years’ team in mind, one of the additions to the team will be another member of the Knop family, Ashley Knop.

“I think I am most excited to meet new people on the team and just spend a lot of time together with everyone,” Ashley said. “I feel like I will also just bring a lot of fun and happiness to the team chemistry.”