Barstow girls volleyball raises awareness for breast cancer in the annual Barstow Dig Pink Volleyball game.
Every year, Barstow hosts a Dig Pink volleyball game to support the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. This tradition is more than a decade old and often draws a large crowd all to promote breast cancer awareness within the Barstow community.
This year, Head Coach Chloe Foster said that, “This game drew the largest crowd yet. All of the bleachers were filled and people even took to standing in the hallway to watch the girls play.”
Nora Larson ‘22, one of the team captains, explains that, “The energy is just so much different with a crowd. There is so much support, getting to hear people you have known since Kindergarten cheering for you, especially now as a senior can get pretty emotional at times.”
The team played against last year’s state champions, Heritage Christian, who unfortunately beat the Barstow team with back to back sets, but Captain Nora Larson ‘22 says that the game was “especially difficult…as Heritage Christian was an especially hard team.”
Coach Foster continued, saying that Heritage Christian “is slated to win this year’s Kansas State Championship,” demonstrating the high caliber of the team.
Foster also added that, “The outcome isn’t what we wanted obviously, but they were a really good team. They won state last year and are slated to win state this year for Kansas. It was a good challenge. The goal of the night was to raise money for a good cause.”
The volleyball season so far, however, has been “fantastic,” according to Larson. The team record is currently 15-6-1, with one conference win and multiple tournament wins. The team won their first tournament of the season at Van Horn, giving Varsity “a much needed confidence boost.”
To start Dig Pink out, the seniors on the team, Nora Larson ‘22, Lorelei Culver ‘22, Brooke Dryden ‘22, Zoe Greenwood ‘22, Kelsie Tucker ‘22, and Ysabelle Cobbinah-Fears ‘22 were honored. As the captains of the team, the seniors have been instrumental in what Larson calls, “setting the precedent of energy.”
Each senior walked into the gym with their parents, and received a bouquet of flowers as Joe Fox, Head of Middle and Upper School, gave them a special announcement on the loudspeaker. The announcements then shifted to the starting roster of each team, where every player threw an appropriately colored pink volleyball for the crowd to catch.
Throughout the game, the Barstow Parents Association ran a bake sale to raise money, which provided things like brownies, cookies, and drinks to the patrons of the game. BPA also provided a free slice of pizza to any Barstow students wearing pink in support of the cause.
Head Coach Foster and Assistant Coaches Brooke Thompson and Lisa Tillema also gave the girls some advice during the game. This time, according to Foster, the girls were told to “block out the crowd” and focus on the people playing with them.
Dig Pink is always one of the last volleyball games of the season, an especially bittersweet thought for the senior captains graduating in the upcoming year. Larson echoes this statement, but also reminisces about her own journey to becoming team captain.
When Larson was a freshman, her captains in the Class of 2018 had a very similar dynamic to the ones currently. She explains that she is “so grateful that I had Jill Gillan, Hayley Turner, and Anna Aravena as my captains. They played club like I did, and played together outside of school like I do with my captains currently, so getting to see how they functioned was helpful.”
Unfortunately, this is the last Dig Pink and Barstow volleyball game for our seniors, but they did not leave without giving advice to future volleyball players. Larson says that captains should, “remember who you are working with, and you will always be friends even after the game” and “build those relationships, and make that bond with everybody because we are a family when it comes down to it.”
