It wasn’t a decision Haylie Higgins made on a lark.
But if committing to a decidedly out-of-state college was still made on a wing and a prayer, well?
After finding her footing as a Mancos volleyball talent, with Bluejay wings lifting her blocking hands high above nets found in gyms great and small, from the Four Corners region to the Mile High City, the senior’s prayers of becoming a next-level student-athlete seem to have been answered.
Bringing the good news and paperwork March 25 Montezuma County from Duval County, Florida, Trinity Baptist College head coach Carlin Poyner proudly sat at Higgins’ left – with Jamie Higgins at her daughter’s right and MHS head coach Brianna Yeomans-Allison one chair further right – at a table prepared for the 6-foot middle to sign a letter of intent to bolster the Eagles’ front row this fall.
“Bigger and better,” Haylie Higgins said, after becoming the second Mancos player from the 2023 roster (after Montana State-bound senior Teya Yeomans) to earn a chance to play collegiately. “But it’s still sad; I grew up with this team and I’m leaving it. So I’m kind of nervous … but it’s good. I’m leaving this program but going on to better things.”
“Really being able to talk to her and learn her character, who she was, her work ethic and recognizing how hard she was willing to be there for her teammates, her coaches and her family – and people in general – is a huge aspect of what I was looking for as we look for commitment toward our college,” said Poyner, who braved the snow and 27-degree cold to attend the 8:30 a.m. signing.
“I’m very excited to say that she will be playing in the middle,” she said. “They mentioned that she’s Haylie ‘Block Party’ Higgins, so I’m excited for that. We’re looking forward to having her in that position.”
Located on the west side of Jacksonville and a member of the National Christian College Athletic Association’s Division II, South Region ranks, Trinity Baptist will go into fall ready to build upon lessons learned in a difficult 2023 grind.
Whereas Higgins, Yeomans and Mancos ended up 23-4 overall after two CHSAA Class 2A State Championships losses inside the Denver Coliseum, TBC soldiered through a trying 1-22 campaign halted Nov. 3 by a 17-25, 21-25, 18-25 South Region Tournament loss in Greenville, S.C., to unrelated Trinity College of Florida at Bob Jones University.
The Eagles’ lone win had come Sept. 23 with via a sweep of Georgia Highlands College’s first-year program after losing that day to NJCAA Division I Andrew College, hosting the triangular in Cuthbert, Georgia. And for Poyner it was her first “W” as a collegiate head coach not much older than her players.
Having graduated from Trinity Baptist in spring 2023, she’d received the Athletic Director Excellence Cup – TBC’s highest athletic honor – as a senior Eagle. She had played throughout high school, helping Florida’s High Springs First Christian Academy win the Florida/Georgia-oriented Southeastern Christian Conference varsity championship as a junior and place second as a senior.
“She contacted me through, like, a recruiting website. And she just hit me up. We started talking and calling each other,” said Higgins, interested in prelaw studies at Trinity Baptist. “I liked her, and they offered me a really good offer, so I took it.”
Poyner, meanwhile, was hired as TBC head coach in mid-May 2023, succeeding May 2020 hire – and former softball player at Florida State – Leah Bennett.
“I was starting my journey of recruiting in the fall and as I was looking … through a program called FieldLevel, I found her,” Poyner said of Higgins. “Started watching film and then I reached out, started talking to her personally – and, after that, getting more footage to be able to watch her athletically.”
“I’m going to be, like, 30 minutes away from the beach,” said a grinning Higgins (163 kills on .285 hitting, 72 total blocks, 54 service aces in ’23). “But I feel pretty ready; I know I can do really good things on that team.”
“Personally, as someone who’s graduated from the institution myself, it is a wonderful environment. Family-oriented, very close-knit, the professors and administration are there for you even as a student-athlete,” said Poyner, a 2019 recruit. “You have that community that’s there to work toward building camaraderie and making sure there’s that understanding that you’re not alone the entire time you’re going through college. That’s something that we try to build, as a community and as a team.”
Once an outsider to the Mancos Valley, arriving from Verdigris, Oklahoma, after her middle-school days, Higgins reflected on what it took to not only wear MHS’ blue-and-white but now advance to where Eagles dare.
“Freshman year, I was scared to death,” she said. “I was at a new school, and starting varsity as a freshman is already, like, a really big deal! I finally got more comfortable sophomore year, then my junior year I was like, ‘OK!’ And I feel like this, my senior year, I’ve really improved a lot as a player. I’ve put in a lot of extra work, put in the hours, and I feel like it’s paid off.”
