Next year, the Michaels’ will be on their own for the first time ever. Lauren (left) will be attending Illinois State University, Maggie will playing volleyball at University of Northern Iowa, Reese will be going to Missouri and Gavin playing baseball for Cincinnati. Photo Courtesy of: The Michaels Family

The question was a simple one. Too simple.

Who’s the best at ping pong?

All four Michaels siblings answered at once, each building a case, citing specific matches and disputed outcomes that seemed to stretch back for years.

They talked over each other, around each other, through each other—until finally landing on the one answer everyone could agree on.

Lauren is the worst.

The Michaels quadruplets—Gavin, Reese, Maggie and Lauren—are finishing their senior year at Community. The odds of being born a quadruplet are roughly 1 in 700,000. The odds of all four landing in the same school, competing in the same hallways and arguing over the same PlayStation are harder to calculate.

The four siblings initially all applied to attend University High School—the Pioneers only accepted Gavin.

That’s something U-High administrators would come to regret as the Michaels girls made a name for themselves on the volleyball and tennis courts—and Gavin would transfer to Community after his sophomore year.

As Gavin heads into postseason play with Community’s baseball team—30-2 on the season and one of the state’s top contenders—the four are quietly aware of what’s coming: graduation, and for the first time, separate everything.

Being together “is just normal for us,” Reese said.

Shared space, shared time and shared everything else has defined the Michaels’ years together.

They shared cribs as babies, sleeping two to a bed. They were divided into pairs for every grade school classroom.

And they still argue, loudly and daily, about who controls the PlayStation.

Nobody likes sharing. The last slice of pizza. The final stick of gum. For the Michaels, though, sharing is the only life they have ever known—and the bonds it has built run deeper than four years of high school can contain.

Even across sports, the four refuse clean separation.

Gavin said his sisters will join him for wiffle ball in the backyard when he asks. He returns the favor on the volleyball court.

“If I want to play volleyball with Maggie and Lauren,” Gavin said, “I’m pretty good at volleyball.”

When it comes facing off against Reese at tennis, Gavin said, “I would swing the racket back and forth a couple times.”

Maggie didn’t let that stand unchallenged.

“He’s okay,” she said, before the room dissolved into laughter.

That competitive edge has pushed each of them outward, toward something of their own.

Reese, who played tennis for Community until her senior season, found her independence on a court where none of her siblings could follow.

Being the only Michaels on the roster—without a familiar face at the end of the bench—was harder than she expected.

“I didn’t really know any girls on the tennis team, so that was definitely hard not having my sisters there,” Reese said. “It was really out of my comfort zone—which was good for me. It was a good challenge just to be able to meet new people.”

For Gavin, that separation came earlier—and hit harder, when he enrolled at U-High to pursue baseball, splitting from his sisters entirely.

The three girls drove one car. Gavin a separate route.

“It was a little different,” Lauren said.

Then, in 2023, Gavin transferred to Community.

The four were back in the same building—and soon, the same schedule.

Gavin and Maggie, “his favorite sister” he joked, will share a culinary class this semester.

The room erupted again as old memories resurfaced, the pair had shared a crib once.

Lauren has found that the deepest form of sharing between the four has nothing to do with sports or classes.

She credits Maggie’s consistency for sustaining her own faith.

“I’ll just walk into the room and she’s always doing her devotional,” Lauren said. “That drives me to continue staying close with my religious habits.”

She said Reese and Gavin serve as sounding boards for harder questions, too.

“I can communicate with them on a different level,” Lauren said. “I would just ask them questions about being a Christian, and questions about my problems.”

Now, with graduation days away and Gavin’s team chasing a postseason title, the four face the first chapter of their lives that won’t be written together.

Separate colleges. Separate zip codes. Separate everything.

For now, though, they’ll share the same dinner table and the same unresolved arguments about ping pong, paddles and Playstation controllers.

When asked what it has all meant, the four didn’t talk over each other. For once, they answered the same way.

“It’s definitely a blessing,” Gavin said. “We are really built-in best friends.”