First year volleyball coach for Kemmerer High School, Paige Becker, is a native to the city and she is excited to get the season going.

She was an assistant coach last season for the Rangers, but has taken over the head coaching duties. She played both volleyball and basketball during her high school days. She also coached the AAU team for two years before joining the high school volleyball team last season as an assistant.

“So far it’s been great,” Becker said. “I’ve really enjoyed how it’s all gone so far and excited for the season.”

She works as a Special Education Administrative Assistant right now and is hoping to make an impact in her players’ lives.

“Spending time with the girls and being a positive influence in their lives,” Becker said about what makes her passionate about the sport. “Help them become good teammates, become good players, and hopefully help them go into the real world with respect and care for others.”

She says there has been a learning curve for her personally. She played one position in high school and now she is responsible to help her players master skills at other positions she never really played.

“Me teaching it has given me a whole new love and appreciation for the game to see how complicated it really is,” Becker said. “Because as an outside hitter back in the day I didn’t really get the whole grand scheme of things.”

A couple weekends ago the team went to a tournament in Riverton, Wyoming. She says the varsity played well overall, but it also showed her what the team needs to focus on to improve.

She hopes getting those reps and building off last season’s success will pay off. The Rangers last season were fairly young and went to the state tournament. She says it seemed those young players got a little nervous during the tournament.

“They seemed a little surprise with kind of how big the environment was,” Becker said. “Like the chaos of the environment and really how intense it can be.”

However, she believes it will help the team realize what it takes to get there again and hopefully they’ll be even more prepared for that atmosphere again for this season.

She says in that tournament in Riverton they had an opportunity to face some great hitters. So that is helping them learn how to better build the Rangers’ defense. She also says that in this tournament they were able to pick up a couple wins against conference opponents.

Majority of the rotation will be juniors who were sophomores last season during the state tournament. Becker says they are all coming together and working hard together.

She also believes most sports in Kemmerer High School has taken a big jump in the last year or so.

“The kids are for sure putting in the extra time,” Becker said. “The kids are super eager, super excited, they’re putting in time in the offseason.”

She says the coaches are really passionate and that rubs off onto the players across all sports.