Kieran Presser already knows what comes next.

A senior at Joppa-Maple Grove, she's been thinking about cosmetology for a long time — and now she's already enrolled in the program at West Kentucky Tech in Paducah. Not planning to enroll. Already in.

It's a family tradition of the most specific kind. Her grandmother did cosmetology right after school. Her mother did it. Her aunts went through it. By the time Kieran started paying attention to what she liked — her own hair, her nails, the whole process of making yourself look the way you want to look — the path was familiar.

"If I can learn to do it myself," she says, "then I won't have to spend the money to go get it done."

And she can help her family. And her friends.

The plan after graduation is straightforward: work in a shop first, build experience, then eventually open her own studio. She's already laying the groundwork.

Every paycheck from Taco Bell, she takes fifty to a hundred dollars and gives it to her mom, who deposits it into a savings account she opened for Kieran years ago. Birthday money, Christmas money, whatever comes in — it goes in.

"Cosmetology has been, like, an idea for me for a long time," she says. "I'm ready. I'm excited about it."

What she's building toward is partly practical and partly something harder to name. She thinks about her family — the things that don't always go their way — and about what it means to be the person who helps someone put a smile back on their face.

"Being able to put that confidence back on them, or like the smile back on their face, just makes it a lot better," she says.

She wants to be in the business of that.

At Joppa, Kieran played basketball and volleyball all four years. She'll tell you the school isn't perfect, but she loves it anyway. The size of the place means the relationships go deeper than they might somewhere bigger.

"The teams," she says, "and like the families you create while you're here." The bond you get with your principal, your superintendent, the other kids — in a school this small, you actually know people.

"I love being at school," she says. "I'm gonna miss it when I graduate."

She means it.

Just down the hall from where Kieran is finishing her senior year, Jori DeNeve is coaching the girls' basketball team — and bringing a perspective to that role that most coaches can't.

Jori is a Deputy Sheriff.

On the court, that means her players get something beyond basketball strategy. She shows them what it looks like for a woman to hold that job, to carry that responsibility, to walk into situations most people never see. "I'm able to give these girls real-life experiences," she says. They ask about her work constantly — procedures, stories, things she's had to do. She believes those conversations have shaped decisions some of them will make for the rest of their lives.

From Augusta City, Illinois, originally, she came to Joppa to coach — and found a team hungry for what she had to offer.

The season had its challenges, but one game stands out. Pope County. Round-robin tournament. Back and forth through the first half, nothing settled. Then halftime, something shifted.

"The fire and the compassion for the game of basketball had returned," she says.

Coming out of the locker room in the third quarter, the plays they'd drawn up started working. The energy moved through the whole team. A freshman named Bella Emery had the game of her young career — breakaway layups, transition jump shots, the kind of energy that gives everyone else permission to match it.

"She had some high energy that contributed and trickled down to the team," Jori says.

By the end, the win felt like more than a win.

"I've never seen them so confident," she says. "We needed it."

That's what she's teaching. Not just basketball. The thing underneath it — that you can come back, that the scoreboard isn't the story, that a team that believes in itself is something different from a team that doesn't.

"I saw the entire team make a difference," she says.

Two people at Joppa, building different things with the same materials. Kieran with a savings account and a cosmetology license on the horizon. Jori with a whistle and a badge and a team that found themselves in a third quarter in a gym in a round-robin tournament.

Both of them are working toward the same thing, really.

Giving someone — themselves, their family, their players — the confidence to take the next step.