Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Best Thing About Being A Lady Tiger
PRAIRIE GROVE JUNIORS VENTURE INTO VOLLEYBALL
PRAIRIE GROVE — The best thing about being a young woman for Prairie Grove juniors Elizabeth Stoufer and Rhiannon Umfleet stems from privileges and opportunities established and handed down by previous generations.
As American citizens there’s a world of adventure available to them that many teenage girls around the world can only dream of.
“Having the opportunity to play with these teams is amazing and I’m really thankful for it,” said Rhiannon who also plays softball.
Rhiannon also points out the educational opportunities available for American girls.
“I feel like Prairie Grove is a great school and it has really helped me learn and prepped me for the real world and I’m also grateful for that because I know that a lot of young ladies in different countries don’t get that opportunity,” Rhiannon said.
Elizabeth agrees that sports participation is a big thing that sets American girls apart from other nations across the globe where opportunities are performance based.
“It’s either you’re really good and you can do good and they do things for you or you’re really bad and you’re not going to do it at all,” Elizabeth said.
“Here, we have options like go to a bigger school or go to a smaller school but I guess like in other countries it’s either you’re good or you’re not.”
Country star Shania Twain, for all of her sass, glitter and over- the- top vocal performances, never said it better than the founding fathers when they articulated these concepts into the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
As freshmen both student-athletes experienced heartache with the theft of the 2020 softball season cancelled because of covid sanctions.
Elizabeth at first thought, “Oh well, we’ll get back to it in a few days, a few weeks,” and then a month rolled by and she realized, “Wow, I really miss the sport.”
Elizabeth coped by getting out into her front yard hitting the tee, doing basic softball stuff, trying to make herself better for the team next year so she could help them out and worked on her craft.
Rhiannon also initially felt unfazed me, but once she realized what happened it was heart-breaking.
“Just having my freshman season taken away from me, that was really hard, it really hurt the team because we would have been 10 times better if we had that season and we got to know our juniors that would be our seniors my sophomore year and I feel like we would have done a lot better,” Rhiannon said.
“It was really a setback and it was really mentally hard to get back into the game again because we always had that fear that it was going to get taken away from us again. At any moment someone could test positive and season’s over just like that.”
Toward the end of their sophomore year they decided to take something back, opting to reinvent themselves and try out for volleyball, a sport neither played before.
“I figured, I mean, hey, anything can happen and it can be taken away from me so I might as well try everything that I can and try to experience it all in the moment,” Rhiannon said.
Prairie Grove coach Lindsey Biocic found herself encouraged as she witnessed these two teenage athletes willing to try something new and not be afraid to fail and or to work through mistakes while they learned the principles of the game of volleyball from the ground up.
“I’m just really impressed with them going out of their comfort zone to try out for a sport that they’ve never really played before. I mean they don’t use that as an excuse. They work hard to improve every day and contribute to the team as much as they possibly can,” Biocic said.
Their presence on the 2021 Prairie Grove volleyball roster proved mutually beneficial to both Elizabeth and Rhiannon as well as the Lady Tiger program. Stepping out made their lives and their team better.