The Encampment Lady Tigers were honored for the Volleyball 1A State Championship on Nov. 24 in an all-school assembly.
Encampment K-12 School Principal Mike Erickson told the students there are lots of opportunities for them at Encampment School. Academics, the science fair, authors contests, competing in art, music and competing in sports are just a few of the opportunities available to the students.
“There are all kinds of things that you can compete in,” Erickson said.
At the beginning of the school year, Erickson had the teachers and sponsors compile a list of what the students had accomplished.
On Nov. 24, that list was added to. Although it was not an all-encompassing list, Erickson said. He shared with the students some of those accomplishments – students in the Taco Johns Challenge placed second; The Encampment Junior High volleyball team were tournament champions; several students went out for cross-country and Ashlynn Johnson earned all-state. In golf Guy Erickson made all-state. Principal Erickson went on to say that last year’s seventh graders had the top reading scores in the state, and last year’s second graders had the seventh highest math scores in the state.
Erickson said that Encampment High School has had the highest average of ACT scores for the last two years.
Last but not least – the 1A Volleyball Championship in The accomplishments were met with plenty of applause from the student body.
Clint Bromley, the Encampment School activities director, congratulated the volleyball team for the 1A championship. Bromley said that he was told there was only one loss during the season, although he couldn’t find it in the stats, so he considered the volleyball champions to be undefeated.
In conference play, the team was undefeated, as the only game they lost was during the Saratoga Pool Play at the beginning of the year before conference play began.
The first championship won by the Lady Tigers was in 1975 – Bromley said he was a senior in high school that year and witnessed a common core of girls playing. He said this year, he saw that same type of common core of girls playing. With this in mind, Bromley said he hopes to see more banners show up in the future.
Volleyball head coach Robin O’Leary spoke next about the pride she had in her team.
Eight years ago, Bromley and O’Leary got together and talked about modeling the volleyball program after a successful cohesive program they had witnessed. The program began with the junior high team and teaching the skills that they would need when they got to high school, so that the coach was not teaching them how to play volleyball, but build on what the girls already knew.
Five years ago, Sammy Baysinger was hired to be the head coach for the junior high team and working with O’Leary as the overall head of the program, the teams began to see success.
O’Leary’s seniors were the first to be trained by Baysinger, O’Leary explained, and she was able to build their skills from what Baysinger taught them.
As the next group of athletes moved on from Baysinger, O’Leary was able to build the team to what it is today.
O’Leary said she never would have been able to build the team to do the more complicated plays that won them the championship.
O’Leary also credited the leadership in Encampment for allowing the coaches to coach.
When the team came home with the fourth place trophy last year, they were not happy. In fact, O’Leary said, they were pretty upset about it. That is when the team decided they had to play for the team and not for themselves.
O’Leary saw the success of that when her players were humble after they made their play, but their teammates were excited for them.
Seniors Cassidy Little, Alyssa Barkhurst and Hunter Hammer thanked the student body for their support during the season.
Barkhurst talked about the accomplishments the team made during the season.
In Wyoming, there are 59 volleyball teams and only four win a state championship – each in their division. The probability of winning the state championship in 1A is 4.7 percent.
In the WyoPreps voting, Encampment had placed second in standings all season long, with KayCee as first place. When the Encampment team moved into the first place, it was by a unanimous vote of six, something that has not happened before in WyoPreps history.
One thing the Lady Tigers were particularly proud of, was the fact they beat the Baggs team for the first time on the Baggs home court in 16 years.
Statistically, before state, the team had 94.7 percent successful serves. The team had a 37 percent kill rate – out of 2,947 attempts, they had 848 kills and only 313 errors.
The trio mentioned the top three in aces, kills, blocks and digs –
Aces: Sierra Loftice, 57; Alyssa Barkhurst, 54; Paige Powell, 28
Kills: Paige Powell, 218; Hailey Barkhurst - 200; Alyssa 171
Digs: Alyssa 425/1312; McKenzie Powell 229/1312; Hailey 212/1312
Blocks: Paige 53; McKenzie 47; Cassidy Little 25.
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