Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Lincoln’s First Year Coach Enthusiastic About Future
LINCOLN — Lincoln volleyball coach Brittany Engel recently recounted progress experienced in the Lady Wolves’ program during her first season as head coach this past fall.
“We had a very good volleyball season. We improved a lot from the past season. We ended this season with four wins which was four times as many as we’ve had in the past so it was really exciting to steadily improve,” Engel said.
Lincoln’s junior high team ended up in fourth place in the conference, concluding a good year in junior high, and Engel is looking forward to those junior high girls moving up to the senior high team next year and predicts the Lady Wolves are going to continue to improve.
Engel stepped into the position with no volleyball experience since she played at the middle school level yet brought a fresh enthusiasm and benefited from a good mentor, former Siloam Springs coach Rose Cheek.
Cheek once utilized a unique motivational tool while the Lady Panthers competed as a member of a blended 7A/6A West Conference and fell to 3-6 during the 2012 season. Offering the team a chance to do her makeup and hair if they turned things around provided a fiery sparkplug and Siloam Springs won five straight league matches.
Cheek served as Engel’s Health teacher at Siloam Springs and remains one of her really, good friends.
“So she’s actually been coming to our practices and mentoring me and I’ve learned a lot more about volleyball from her,” Engel said.
Ryleigh Landrum became a All- Conference player for Lincoln while wearing jersey No. 17 for the Lady Wolves, serving as team captain and outside hitter and wherever Engel positioned her.
“She can set when I needed her to do that and she’s really good. She’s a utility player. She plays everywhere. She led the team in kills and she led our whole season this year and that was awesome,” Engel said.
Enge l ’s background comes from college softball and after serving as assistant coach for the past two seasons she steps up as head coach for the upcoming 2022 season.
“I am very excited about this upcoming season with a lot of bright freshmen coming up and we have a lot of good returners,” Engel said. “I am really excited to see how we do this year because we ended last year on a real high. We ended very positive. We got beat out by Paris at Regionals, which they went on and they did really well at state so I really want to make a state run this year and I think we have the talent to do it.”