The Verde Valley’s youngest head volleyball coach has a second chance Wednesday, Sept. 21, to live a girl’s secret dream: Defeat mom.
That is when 20-year-old Angel Chavez leads the Cottonwood Middle School volleyball program into the Clarkdale-Jerome School gymnasium to try to give her mother, Lynda, her first loss this fall as the Mingus Rams’ head coach.
“I’m learning new things every day,” Angel Chavez said. “It’s different, being on the other end, but it’s fun.”
It was just two years ago when Chavez accepted an offer to play volleyball at Pima Community College, in Tucson, after being named all-section middle blocker as a Mingus Union High School senior.
“When I played, I wasn’t the loudest person,” she said. “I’m still not, as a coach. I kind of lead by example.
“But I have to be. In practice, I do drills with them, show them, but there’s only so much I can do.”
By her seventh match as a head coach Wednesday, Sept. 7, Chavez realized how much she had to learn and work on, as mother won their first face-off in straight sets, 25-10, 25-18.
“It was kind of fun,” Lynda Chavez said — before seeing the look on the face of Angel, who works with her at Clarkdale as a fourth-grade aide. “She’s like, ‘Fun for you.’”
About 40 Lobos came to volleyball tryouts in May, when Angel Chavez was named Lobos head coach after returning home to finish her final semester of Pima classes online.
At Clarkdale, 60 Mingus Rams forced Lynda Chavez to enlist assistant coaches Liz Scott and Kari Lynk to help her with a developmental team.
“We have a D team in the fifth grade,” Chavez said. “We just work with them on Friday.”
No shame in being outnumbered, but Angel Chavez would still bring in uncle Dave Moncibaez, the MUHS head girls basketball coach when she played for the Marauders, as an assistant.
“I just coach my 12 on A team,” she said. “There’s 15 girls on the B team. That’s kind of a lot, so they created a little bit of a C team.”
For the full Lobos and Mingus Rams volleyball schedules, please see the Wednesday, Sept. 21, issues of the Camp Verde Journal and Cottonwood Journal Extra.
