{"id":15855,"date":"2025-11-02T17:08:01","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T00:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ignacio-volleyball-ready-to-take-cohesive-team-underdog-mentality-into-playoffs\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:52:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:52:24","slug":"ignacio-volleyball-ready-to-take-cohesive-team-underdog-mentality-into-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ignacio-volleyball-ready-to-take-cohesive-team-underdog-mentality-into-playoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ignacio volleyball ready to take cohesive team, underdog mentality into playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Ignacio High School volleyball team had one of its best regular seasons in program history. Now, the focus is on the postseason. (Courtesy Jennifer Seibel)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Ignacio volleyball head coach Jennifer Seibel was scared after seeing her team play in the summer.<\/p>\n

Seibel, a former Ignacio High School volleyball player, knows that Ignacio has always been the underdog. The Bobcats have always been undersized and are a small school, with 206 students in the entire high school in 2023-2024.<\/p>\n

So, when the Ignacio volleyball team went to Farmington in the summer to compete against quality competition, Seibel saw the potential of her team. She saw a type of energy and connection among the girls that she hadn\u2019t seen before. When she returned to Ignacio, she knew the team could be great.<\/p>\n

Therefore, Seibel was excited about the potential of her team, but also nervous and scared. She was nervous and scared about her team plateauing too early in the season. So she wanted to push her girls to be tough, resilient and give everything they had.<\/p>\n

It turns out, Seibel\u2019s nerves and how she\u2019s pushed her team have paid off.<\/p>\n

At 19-4 overall and 11-1 in the 2A\/1A San Juan Basin League, the Bobcats just finished their best regular season in at least 15 years. Ignacio won nine of its 10 final regular-season games, with its only loss in that span coming against 2A\u2019s No. 5 team, Dolores, a team Ignacio defeated earlier in the season.<\/p>\n

The Bobcats are very balanced on offense, with five players over 110 kills. What\u2019s scary for the rest of 2A is that none of those players are seniors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never been that balanced in the three years that I\u2019ve been coaching,\u201d Seibel said. \u201cWe are pretty versatile with our threats offensively. We\u2019ve got a range of pins who can swing \u2026 we\u2019ve got a threat from every spot on the back row and front row. My setters are really good at distributing the ball and seeing the defense and the blocking \u2026 if someone is having a hard time, we have multiple options to go to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seibel has a special connection with her team this season; she\u2019s been coaching the majority of the juniors on the team since they\u2019ve been in sixth grade. It\u2019s been fulfilling for Seibel to see them grow and push them to become better young women.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a symbiotic relationship for Seibel and her players. It\u2019s her third year as the head coach at Ignacio and she\u2019s learned to listen to her players more to get their buy-in. She knows if they feel good and empowered, they\u2019ll play better.<\/p>\n

Seibel knows she doesn\u2019t know everything about volleyball, so she\u2019s always willing to listen and learn from her players and coaching mentors like Durango\u2019s Kelley Rifilato or Bayfield\u2019s Terene Foutz.<\/p>\n

Two of Seibel\u2019s leaders and coaches on the court are junior captains Lainee Bradley and Kelley Sirios. Before the team\u2019s last win against Sargent on Thursday, Bradley was second on the team with 144 kills. Sirios was fifth on the team with 114 kills and first with 546 assists.<\/p>\n

Bradley, an outside hitter, is the team\u2019s boisterous, go-getter type of leader, while Sirios leads by example in silence, according to Seibel.<\/p>\n

Sirios has been on varsity for three years. She\u2019s always been the setter and she enjoys controlling the game and switching the tempo when needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been pretty nice because in the past, we\u2019ve only had one or two options,\u201d Sirios said. \u201cHaving four to five girls, it sure has been really nice because I\u2019ve been able to spread the ball out and it\u2019s been easier to get kills that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fellow junior Tarah Baker is another key part of the team as Ignacio\u2019s libero. It\u2019s her third year on varsity and as a libero, she enjoys the intensity of the back row.<\/p>\n

Baker and Sirios both said the team\u2019s cohesion is one of the reasons for the team\u2019s success. The girls are all best friends, in addition to most of them playing together since middle school.<\/p>\n

The trio of Baker, Bradley and Sirios played together last year on Ignacio\u2019s squad that made it to the postseason and lost in regionals. The Bobcats were underdogs as the No. 24 seed in the bracket, playing in No. 1 Simla\u2019s regional. Despite Ignacio taking the familiar role as the underdog, Sirios said the team wasn\u2019t humble enough in the regional and it cost them.<\/p>\n

After losing in regionals last season, the Bobcats got some needed reinforcements. Sophomore Alleah Neil and junior Reggi Gustafson transferred into Ignacio, meshed with the returners seamlessly and helped the team tremendously.<\/p>\n

At 6-foot-1-inches, Neil led the team in kills before the final game and has given the program the height it has rarely had. Gustafson has emerged as one of the Bobcats\u2019 best options and was third in kills before the final game against Sargent.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlleah has helped us so much with blocking and hitting,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cFor her first year on varsity and coming out and rocking it, it\u2019s amazing. Reggi went to Bayfield and she has some club experience. She\u2019s a very good player. She reads the ball so good and she has a really high volleyball IQ.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with the addition of Neil and Gustafson, the team lost its underdog mentality at its first game of the season against Montezuma-Cortez and lost 3-1. Seibel saw her team was overconfident and knew that game humbled them and brought them back to reality. After that, Ignacio went 19-3 and swept 14 of those opponents.<\/p>\n

Now, the Bobcats are on the precipice of hosting a regional for the first time since Seibel has been the head coach. The Bobcats have been to the postseason and have finished with a winning record every year since 2021, but Ignacio will have to play with the heart and fight Seibel knows Ignacio is known for. The Bobcats work in the offseason and their underdog mentality will be tested as the potential host of their region.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just want to compete,\u201d Seibel said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where we are. We\u2019re going to come in with the mindset of we\u2019ve got to fight from here on out. It\u2019d be great to host in our own gym, but it doesn\u2019t matter where we\u2019re going. We\u2019re ready to fight and keep our focus on the match and not the location.\u201d<\/p>\n

bkelly@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bobcats in position to host regional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[642,1877,1235,846,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-high-school-sports","tag-high-school-volleyball","tag-ignacio","tag-ignacio-high-school","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15855"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19880,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15855\/revisions\/19880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15855"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}