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| Brittany (Roelike) Borgerding, No. 17, high fives her teammates Taylor Gregory (14) and Becca Gruber during her final volleyball match played as a Jaguar on November 3, 2012 at Pierz high school. |
The player turned teacher and assistant coach is now the head coach!
Last Monday at the B-B-E school board meeting, Class of 2013 graduate Brittany (Roelike) Borgerding was named the B-B-E Jaguars volleyball team's seventh head coach in program history. Coach Borgerding has been an assistant coach with the program since the fall of 2020. She is a staff member of the school's Jaguar Kids Connection, and in 2020-2021, she was one of three first grade teachers in the elementary school. Her husband is Ben Borgerding, also a B-B-E graduate, who is an elementary and middle school STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) teacher in Paynesville.
Here's Coach Borgerding singing the National Anthem during her junior volleyball season:
On that night (September 26, 2011), the Jaguars hosted MACCRAY in a non-conference match but lost by a 3-1 score. The Wolverines went 21-8 that fall and lost a 5-set barn burner to Minneota in the Sub-Section 3A-North championship. The Vikings later took third place at the state tournament with a 28-7 final record. B-B-E stormed through the sub-section playoffs before suffering one of the toughest playoff losses I've witnessed. In game five of the Section 5A finals, the Jaguars lost 15-12 to Nevis. The Nevis Tigers went to state and beat Minneota in a 3-2 match before falling 3-0 in the state finals to Class 1A juggernaut Bethlehem Academy of Faribault. In that 3-2 win over Minneota, the Tigers beat the Vikings 15-13 after winning game four 28-26.
In B-B-E's loss to Nevis in the 2011 Section 5A finals, the Jaguars had the upper hand after winning 25-17 in game two and 25-21 in game three. The tables turned in a big way in game four, however, as Nevis was unstoppable in a 25-8 win. Game five was topsy-turvy the whole way. I'll never forget how tough that loss was. It was brutal.
B-B-E's previous head coaches were as follows (beginning with the first one): Donna Hurst (1988-1989), Carrie Halvorson (1989-1998), Mimi Knutson (1999-2006), Kevin Weller (2007-2018), Steve Waddell (2019) and Alanna Hunter (2020-2023). Coach Donna Hurst, who retired from B-B-E in 2014, had two outstanding teams in 1988 and 1989, with the Jaguars going 18-6 in her last season before she turned the reigns over to Coach Halvorson in 1990. The past 5 B-B-E volleyball coaches all coached at least one sub-section championship team. Needless to say, the bar has been set quite high for B-B-E volleyball dating back to the first year Coach Halvorson's teams advanced to a subsection title match (1994).
In August 2020, I had an announcement posted when Coach Borgerding was hired to the first-grade position...you can read more about here by clicking here: https://bbejaguars.blogspot.com/2020/08/jaguar-standout-moves-to-classroom.html. This afternoon, I found more notes in my archives on Coach Borgerding. The notes say she was not only B-B-E's Triple-A nominee, but she then earned the District 20 Triple-A award.
In her career, Borgerding earned 1,053 digs and 964 kills. In her senior season, she earned 352 kills. In that fall of 2012, head coach Kevin Weller had 9 seniors on the roster (8 players, 1 student manager) when they were champions of the Central Minnesota Conference, Sub-Section 5A-South and runners-up in Section 5A. As a junior, Borgerding earned All-State Honorable mention.
