There has not been a new head volleyball coach at Mancos High School in 10 years. But beginning this fall, Ramona Shepherd takes over for longtime coach Bill Tourjee after a very successful tenure guiding the Blue Jays.

Tourjee took Mancos to the Class 2A State Tournament once and to Western Regionals several times during his stay.

But now Shepherd, who as been an assistant under Tourjee for eight of those years, will officially guide the team beginning Aug. 14. Shepherd, 43, was named head coach recently by the Re-6 Board of Education.

"I have nothing but good things to say about Bill," Shepherd said. "He did a marvelously job with those girls. I probably won’t change a lot of the ways he did things right away although I will run my practices a little differently. I do have a certain order that I do things."

Shepherd is certainly no rookie to coaching. She has been coaching for 18 years and has previous head coaching experience.

She is going to emphasize conditioning more than in past years.

"We do want a conditioning and development portion to be emphasized more than in past years. I want them confident when they go out on the court that they can stay with other teams," she commented.

Shepherd will be the first to say that next fall will definitely be a rebuilding year.

"I don’t like to use that old cliché, but next fall that’s the way it will be. We lose a lot of girls to graduation and we don’t have much experience coming back. We won’t have a lot of height so we will have problems getting above the net. This definitely will be a development year."

She indicated she will depend heavily on returnees Katie Paxton, Tasha Walton, and Danielle Willburn among others. Offensively, at least for now, she will go with a two setters rather than put all the pressure on one as in a 6-1 alignment. But she said she eventually wants to go a 6-1.

"Thankfully a lot of other teams will lose a lot. Dolores will be hit hard by graduation. Nucla will lose a lot, too. I think Norwood will have a good team. Dolores County also should be improved," she noted.

"Volleyball is such a great game for girls. I love the sport. I enjoy being around the game and coaching it," she remarked.

Shepherd started an Amateur Athletic Union program a year ago and she had some 35 girls in the program this past winter. But she said she knows she won’t benefit from that for a few more years.

Right now there is open gym for the girls. They can come in and work on various aspects of their game one night per week. She also joined with Montezuma-Cortez High School head coach Lindy Mortensen in starting the Friendship Volleyball League, featuring several teams throughout the area. They compete scrimmage-type tournaments through the spring and early summer.