Texico volleyball has shot at state title seven-peat
TEXICO, N.M. (BVM) — The most successful high school volleyball program in New Mexico doesn’t reside in one of the state’s bigger cities like Albuquerque or Las Cruces, but rather in a town of just over 1,000 people.
The Texico Wolverines have won 16 state championships since 1980 and have finished as state runner-up six times. They’ve claimed 12 of those state titles in the past 14 years — eight in Class AA and four in Class AAA — and last season they six-peated for the second time.
“We’ve got great kids and we’ve got a super tradition here,” said Kristen Scanlan, who’s been the head coach at Texico since 2008 and has led the Wolverines to their last 10 state titles. “My seniors are amazing leaders every single year; they teach the younger kids. The tradition is just huge here. We’ve got a super school that really promotes a very good culture and it’s easy to transfer that to our sports programs as well.”
It appears to be rather easy for the Wolverines to carry over success from year to year given the fact that they’ve won six consecutive state titles twice over the past 14 seasons. But it’s an even more impressive accomplishment considering Texico isn’t exactly a factory of future Division I players. Scanlan said most of her players don’t even play club volleyball nor do they often go on to play at any level in college, let alone DI.
“We just have kids that have a lot they want to go on to do in college,” Scanlan said. “We’ve had a high success rate as a high academic team. They just want to have a very good high school experience.”
While they might not necessarily be future college stars, Texico is never devoid of talented players, and such is the case for this season. The Wolverines return five seniors, three of which were all-state performers last year. Riley Rohrbach, who averaged 11 kills, 17 assists, 2 aces and 7 digs per match last season and Sydnee Muse, who averaged 4 kills, 7 digs and 2 aces were both first team all-state picks, while Rachel Phipps, who averaged 20 assists, 2.2 aces and 7 digs, 6 kills and 2 blocks, was a second-team selection.
“On paper, it looks like we’ve got a really strong group and we do,” Scanlan said. “You never know until you get them all together on the court, but the cool thing about the kids I’ve got coming back next year is they have great experience with being in the moment before and they’re extreme competitors. They just don’t quit and that bodes well for them as we approach this season.”
Even for a program as consistent as Texico, it will be a season unlike any other. Back in mid-July, the New Mexico Activities Association (NMAA) released an amended calendar for the 2020-21 academic year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, moving the start of volleyball season to Oct. 5 while other fall sports like football and soccer were moved to winter.
Scanlan said it’s been weird not being able to work with all of her athletes at once because of the restrictions still in place until the regular season officially begins next month, and she knows her players will have to adapt to the changes that come with such a unique season that’s been shortened to eight weeks. While the potential is there for the Wolverines to make a run at breaking their own record of six straight state titles, Scanlan doesn’t believe that’s her team’s focus. At least not for right now.
“They think of it more as the journey and the experience that they gain,” Scanlan said. “If it works out that we play well enough as a team and as a group and things fall where we’re able to have another state title, great. If not, I think just the journey that they get to go on together is enough. I know in my mind it’s always enough for me. If things work out, great, if not, then we’ve had great experiences with each other.”
