A word that anyone spending even a few minutes around the Camp Verde High School volleyball team will hear a lot of is “excited.” Coach Britney Armstrong and the girls on the team are excited to be back in the gym after having limited practices through the spring and summer. They’re also excited to get the season going.
The Cowboys will get their feet wet with a scrimmage at Ash Fork on Thursday, Sept. 17, and will get the season underway the following week.
The 16-game schedule that Camp Verde faces is tough. But through the early practices, Armstrong, now in her fifth year coaching the Cowboys, believes that this year’s team is looking as strong as it ever has in her tenure.
“We’ve got some tough teams but if there’s any year for it, this is the year,” Armstrong said. “We have a tough schedule but our team is looking better than it ever has. The girls are really starting to step up and own their roles and positions on the team, however little or much that may be.”
“I’m stoked to have the girls play up to that competition,” she added. “We’re going to have some competitive games. It’ll be fun — a great experience for them.”
The first game of the Cowboys’ season will embody that.
On Tuesday, Sept. 22, Camp Verde will go on the road to take on Sedona Red Rock High School for a 6 p.m. start. Not only are the Scorpions returning finalists from 2019’s 2A state tournament, but they are a rival of the Cowboys.
“I’m looking forward to the scrimmage and playing Sedona again,” said sophomore Reagan Warren, who is generally just excited about seeing the team’s hard work come to fruition. “We work extremely hard. We are here every day after school, on Fridays, and we come even on our days off. And our coaches work way harder than we do, honestly. They are here for us; they work extremely hard for us.”
As has been the case with a number of fall sports teams, the beginning of the official practice season was more of a crash course this year than others for the Cowboys. COVID-19 shutdowns limited most of the club season in the spring and while Camp Verde did return to the gym for summer workouts, those were ultimately short-lived as COVID’s second spike led to Camp Verde ending the summer workouts.
But one of the silver linings to come out of that for the Cowboys is that if anything, it’s made the team more eager to take advantage of the time they have with each other now that the fall season is on.
“I want to be able to learn from all of the girls, be able to play the sport again and keep growing,” freshman Erin Collon said. “I haven’t played volleyball in almost a year. It was hard to stay in shape during the summer and I really missed volleyball throughout the whole time. I was sad because we couldn’t have as much open gym time as we wanted.”
One of the things helping the Cowboys this year will be experience.
Camp Verde does have a lot of youth, as is common with most high school teams, especially ones replacing five seniors. But the Cowboys presumptive starting lineup also features a quartet of returning seniors — setter Paige Seneca, Tierney Schuh, Lily Smejkal and Ashlee Bueler. Armstrong has been so impressed by what she’s seen from the older girls on the team and how receptive the younger girls have been that for the first time since becoming Camp Verde’s head coach, she’s planning on having team captains.
“The older girls are showing to be great leaders — kind and loving,” she said. “The younger girls are showing to be eager. That’s exciting. There’s a lot of talent and a lot of great attitudes. A lot of possibilities for sure. It’s exciting.”
