{"id":28508,"date":"2024-03-27T23:05:17","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T23:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-bluejays-volleyball-player-signs-to-play-in-florida\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T06:31:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:31:32","slug":"mancos-bluejays-volleyball-player-signs-to-play-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-bluejays-volleyball-player-signs-to-play-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos Bluejays volleyball player signs to play in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mancos
Mancos senior Haylie Higgins stands with her coach Brianna Yeomans-Allison (left) and Trinity Baptist College head coach Carlin Poyner after signing a letter of intent Monday to play volleyball in Jacksonville, Florida. (Joel Priest\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a decision Haylie Higgins made on a lark.<\/p>\n

But if committing to a decidedly out-of-state college was still made on a wing and a prayer, well?<\/p>\n

After finding her footing as a Mancos volleyball talent, with Bluejay wings lifting her blocking hands high above nets found in gyms great and small, from the Four Corners region to the Mile High City, the senior\u2019s prayers of becoming a next-level student-athlete seem to have been answered.<\/p>\n

\"Joined
Joined by coaches and family, Haylie Higgins signs a letter of intent Monday to play volleyball at Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville, Florida. Trinity Baptist coach Carlin Poyner is seated at right. Joel Priest\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Bringing the good news and paperwork March 25 Montezuma County from Duval County, Florida, Trinity Baptist College head coach Carlin Poyner proudly sat at Higgins\u2019 left \u2013 with Jamie Higgins at her daughter\u2019s right and MHS head coach Brianna Yeomans-Allison one chair further right \u2013 at a table prepared for the 6-foot middle to sign a letter of intent to bolster the Eagles\u2019 front row this fall.<\/p>\n

\"Guided
Guided through the process March 25 by Trinity Baptist College volleyball coach Carlin Poyner, right, Mancos senior Haylie Higgins signs a letter of intent to play volleyball in Jacksonville, Florida. Joel Priest\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Mancos
Mancos senior Haylie Higgins approves of a play during the 2023 Colorado Class 2A State Championships in the Denver Coliseum. Higgins committed Monday to continue her student-athlete career at Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville, Florida.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Mancos
Mancos senior Haylie Higgins puts up a block during the 2023 Colorado Class 2A State Championships inside the Denver Coliseum. (Joel Priest\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cBigger and better,\u201d Haylie Higgins said, after becoming the second Mancos player from the 2023 roster (after Montana State-bound senior Teya Yeomans) to earn a chance to play collegiately. \u201cBut it\u2019s still sad; I grew up with this team and I\u2019m leaving it. So I\u2019m kind of nervous \u2026 but it\u2019s good. I\u2019m leaving this program but going on to better things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReally being able to talk to her and learn her character, who she was, her work ethic and recognizing how hard she was willing to be there for her teammates, her coaches and her family \u2013 and people in general \u2013 is a huge aspect of what I was looking for as we look for commitment toward our college,\u201d said Poyner, who braved the snow and 27-degree cold to attend the 8:30 a.m. signing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very excited to say that she will be playing in the middle,\u201d she said. \u201cThey mentioned that she\u2019s Haylie \u2018Block Party\u2019 Higgins, so I\u2019m excited for that. We\u2019re looking forward to having her in that position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Located on the west side of Jacksonville and a member of the National Christian College Athletic Association\u2019s Division II, South Region ranks, Trinity Baptist will go into fall ready to build upon lessons learned in a difficult 2023 grind.<\/p>\n

Whereas Higgins, Yeomans and Mancos ended up 23-4 overall after two CHSAA Class 2A State Championships losses inside the Denver Coliseum, TBC soldiered through a trying 1-22 campaign halted Nov. 3 by a 17-25, 21-25, 18-25 South Region Tournament loss in Greenville, S.C., to unrelated Trinity College of Florida at Bob Jones University.<\/p>\n

The Eagles\u2019 lone win had come Sept. 23 with via a sweep of Georgia Highlands College\u2019s first-year program after losing that day to NJCAA Division I Andrew College, hosting the triangular in Cuthbert, Georgia. And for Poyner it was her first \u201cW\u201d as a collegiate head coach not much older than her players.<\/p>\n

Having graduated from Trinity Baptist in spring 2023, she\u2019d received the Athletic Director Excellence Cup \u2013 TBC\u2019s highest athletic honor \u2013 as a senior Eagle. She had played throughout high school, helping Florida\u2019s High Springs First Christian Academy win the Florida\/Georgia-oriented Southeastern Christian Conference varsity championship as a junior and place second as a senior.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe contacted me through, like, a recruiting website. And she just hit me up. We started talking and calling each other,\u201d said Higgins, interested in prelaw studies at Trinity Baptist. \u201cI liked her, and they offered me a really good offer, so I took it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poyner, meanwhile, was hired as TBC head coach in mid-May 2023, succeeding May 2020 hire \u2013 and former softball player at Florida State \u2013 Leah Bennett.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was starting my journey of recruiting in the fall and as I was looking \u2026 through a program called FieldLevel, I found her,\u201d Poyner said of Higgins. \u201cStarted watching film and then I reached out, started talking to her personally \u2013 and, after that, getting more footage to be able to watch her athletically.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be, like, 30 minutes away from the beach,\u201d said a grinning Higgins (163 kills on .285 hitting, 72 total blocks, 54 service aces in \u201923). \u201cBut I feel pretty ready; I know I can do really good things on that team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, as someone who\u2019s graduated from the institution myself, it is a wonderful environment. Family-oriented, very close-knit, the professors and administration are there for you even as a student-athlete,\u201d said Poyner, a 2019 recruit. \u201cYou have that community that\u2019s there to work toward building camaraderie and making sure there\u2019s that understanding that you\u2019re not alone the entire time you\u2019re going through college. That\u2019s something that we try to build, as a community and as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once an outsider to the Mancos Valley, arriving from Verdigris, Oklahoma, after her middle-school days, Higgins reflected on what it took to not only wear MHS\u2019 blue-and-white but now advance to where Eagles dare.<\/p>\n

\u201cFreshman year, I was scared to death,\u201d she said. \u201cI was at a new school, and starting varsity as a freshman is already, like, a really big deal! I finally got more comfortable sophomore year, then my junior year I was like, \u2018OK!\u2019 And I feel like this, my senior year, I\u2019ve really improved a lot as a player. I\u2019ve put in a lot of extra work, put in the hours, and I feel like it\u2019s paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Higgins commits to Trinity Baptist Eagles in Jacksonville<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28508","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=28508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80440,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28508\/revisions\/80440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28508"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}