• Spikers head to Orem team camp next week
Continuing to examine the off-season work for the SVHS sports programs brings wrestling and volleyball into the pages of the Independent this week. Here’s a look at those programs as they prep for the 2024-25 school year.
• Wrestling
The wrestling program made a few changes to their summer plans which typically involves a trip to Salina, Utah as they traded it in for a camp in Green River. The Braves scored 175.5 team points this past season at the state tournament and will return three state champs in Tel and Kimball Parry as well as Kooper Burk.
“Salina didn’t work out this year so we found something different,” said head coach Eddie Clark. “Green River had Andrew Alirez from Northern Colorado so we picked up some neat tricks from him.”
Alirez was the 141-pound NCAA Champion in 2023 and recently announced his intention to stay in Greeley after entering the transfer portal. This past season he did not compete collegially but instead chose to take an Olympic redshirt and focus on freestyle.
“There were a few matches as well,” Clark added. “It wasn’t a huge camp. It was more about getting kids out of town and getting them wrestling.”
Another camp the wrestlers attended included the Cael Sanderson family. The former undefeated prep and collegiate wrestler from Utah who now runs the Penn State program.
“Cael’s dad Steve and his brother Cole who was on the Greco World team were there,” Clark said. “We had close to 100 kids there for that camp.”
Other opportunities include a chance to wrestle at least one night per week and lifting in the weight room.
“We just want them to put a little time on the mat,” Clark said. “If you can we want them to get some mat time and get in the weight room and come back a little more athletic than you left. Some are on the football team and others are with Blake {Hoopes} at the CrossFit gym so it’s been really good.”
Clark likes where the team is at as the calendar flips over to July.
“We’ve felt good with what we’ve accomplished this summer,” he replied. “The kids are super busy but we’re excited about the kids who got some time in. We had some guys put in some serious time and you could see that at the Green River camp. We have a bunch of kids going out to Arizona St. for camps. Some are heading to some other camps and traveling so the ones who want to get better are doing that and getting better.”
•Volleyball
The Lady Braves volleyball team is coming off a very successful 28-win campaign that included a win over Cheyenne East at the state tournament before being eliminated by Kelly Walsh on the final day of the season in 2023. Star Valley faced eventual champion Laramie in the opening round, being one of the rare teams to take a set from the Plainsmen. Coach Suni Brown spoke about the 2024 Lady Braves forging their own identity.
“We’ve been pushing them hard,” she stated. “Under the seniors direction they want to be all in. They’ve been lifting weights and doing open gym every week. We’ve been working hard.”
The volleyballers have had one camp and will be traveling to another soon.
“We had our skills camp from UVU (Utah Valley University) and had almost 80 girls there with 7th through 12th grade,” Brown said. “That was a good full three days of volleyball. On July 8, we go down to Orem to their big team camp for four days and bond together and play a lot of volleyball. It’s nothing but games for four days.”
Brown and the staff feel like they are trying to maximize the strengths of their returning team.
“We know very well that we don’t have much height,” she continued. “We graduated six seniors and they had some height. So we’ve been improving our explosive abilities and working on our quickness and speed for this next season. [Doing] vertical exercises to help us play big and fast. The schools that we are playing are two and three times our size so we have to work hard and be smart so that’s where we are focusing. We are trying to be the best at that.”
