LARIMER COUNTY – Psyched to show their skills in the 2025 Colorado Coaches of Girls Sports All-State Volleyball Games Class 3A feature on Sunday, Bayfield’s Evelette Hollibaugh and Lauren Rich seemed even more eager to shine at each other’s expense.
“I thought, ‘I AM going to hit it at her; I’m going to test her a little bit,” said Hollibaugh, assigned to the match’s blue team (in name only; all players wore their respective schools’ uniforms). “I know the way she digs and, we both know each other’s strengths and weaknesses so … I was actually excited that we were on opposite teams.”
“Evie makes me better all the time. So just playing against her, like, in competition was crazy; we both wanted to beat each other,” Red representative Rich said. “We’re really competitive with each other, and … to represent Bayfield here, I think that’s huge.”
Beginning the contest in Fort Collins on their respective benches, the Wolverines soon made their presence known. Rich checked in to serve with Red leading 2-1, but lost the serve when Eaton’s Chloe Crider sailed an attack – allowing Hollibaugh to then enter the fray. Moments later, she went on the offensive with a strong swing, only to see Rich dig it and help Red’s lead grow to 7-3. Hollibaugh went big the very next exchange, but Rich again did what Intermountain Leaguers know she does best, and the rally ended with Red up 8-3.
Hollibaugh then managed to score with a fingertip dink over Blue’s block, but Crider responded with a cross-court spike, and Hollibaugh and Rich would check out for a needed breather. Allowing Blue to only tie the score at 1-1, 11-11 and 12-12, Red – instructed by an IMLer (Centauri’s Eddie Jay Chacon) and the 2025 state champion head coach (Eaton’s Matt Meagher) – forced Blue to use a timeout down 18-13, and Hollibaugh then smashed her first clean kill.
Her next attempt went into the net, however, and Blue got no closer the rest of the way than 23-20. Alamosa’s Aubrey Rothermich then brought up set point by successfully tipping down a Blue over-pass, and Crider cracked a line kill to secure Red a 25-20 win.
Opening Set 2 on serve, Blue suddenly showed new life and, after going up 3-0, never let Red get closer than 3-2 in evening the match with a thorough 25-11 victory. A hard Hollibaugh kill off Crider put Blue up 19-8, and though multiple Rich digs helped Red stave off set point twice, Blue prevailed when Loveland Resurrection Christian’s Kaylynn Pardue dinked a shot over Red’s block but just shallow enough to where even a diving Rich couldn’t reach it.
In fine IML fashion, Rothermich restarted Red’s collective engine in Set 3 with a kill off Hollibaugh’s fingertips. After Hollibaugh put Blue up 3-2 with a strong serve, Rothermich re-tied the score with another kill, made possible in part by Rich cleanly receiving Hollibaugh’s next serve.
But after Blue edged ahead at 4-3, Pardue scored with a solo block and Red’s Laci Christensen (Alamosa) sliced a shot wide as Blue began building momentum, which Red never regained. A timeout moments after a Hollibaugh kill paid no dividends, and a fierce Hollibaugh kill off Rothermich, increasing Blue’s lead to 14-9, showed definitively which side was in control.
Red did manage to fight back to 17-16, via a Peyton Fosha (Granby Middle Park) kill off Hollibaugh, but Red trailed 21-17, after Hollibaugh stuffed an attack by Avery Jaeger of Colorado Springs-based The Classical Academy.
Giving everyone inside Fossil Ridge H.S. Gymnasium another glimpse of practice life at BHS, Hollibaugh served for the last time at 23-19, and zipped it at Rich, whose dig of Eaton’s Madeline Smith later in the exchange ultimately yielded a Rothermich kill. But in the end, Blue polished off a 20-25, 25-11, 25-20 conquest as Hollibaugh’s last dig, resulting from a face-first dive in response to a Rich dig, led to a kill clipped just inside the near antenna and out of bounds off blocker Railey Maske (Eaton).
Rich was happy she and Hollibaugh had the chance to end their careers in Fort Collins. They know they were a key part in a Bayfield program both girls hope continues to prosper.
“When we did get the call from Terene (BHS head coach Foutz) about going to All-State we thought, ‘Us? You sure?’” recalled Hollibaugh. “But I’m so happy to be here, and it was such an amazing opportunity to compete with the best of the best, to meet people I hadn’t played with before. No one on my team knew where Bayfield was, and it was awesome to represent Terene and our hometown.”
