The Opinion-Tribune's Athlete of the Year

Elle Scarborough has this look.

Glenwood girls basketball coach Brian Rasmussen calls it her “eye of the tiger.”

“She’s a fun, easy going, fun-loving kid but she has this ability to turn this switch on,” the coach said of the 2021 Glenwood graduate. “She is so focused. It’s like looking at an Olympic athlete that is locked in. She has that. Everything else is blocked out and she is so in tune to the moment. And I think that defines her as an athlete and what helped her be so successful.”

To former Glenwood volleyball coach Chelsey Hirt, that look is often preceded by a trademark smile. It’s a friendly demeanor on the court that all but hides a deceptively killer competitive streak.

Whether on the volleyball court, the basketball court or the track, Scarborough has a well-earned reputation as a competitor, a leader and a teammate.

“She’s the first to do anything,” said Hirt. “You tell her to sprint, she’ll run. She’s injured, she’ll do what she can. She doesn’t like to sit out. It bothers her if she’s injured because she does have to sit out. She’s going to give 110-percent to whatever she can all the time, all year long.”

Scarborough is The Opinion-Tribune’s 2020-2021 Mills County Athlete of the Year.

Scarborough, who wrapped up her sterling four-year, Glenwood athletic career this spring, knows exactly of what her coaches speak.

She calls it her “go time” switch – and she’s well aware of it when it’s happening.

“Whenever I’m about to compete, I most definitely flip a switch,” she said. “I’m a very competitive person and I’ll never give up no matter what.”

She closes her Ram career as one of the most decorated athletes in school history. A “generational athlete,” former Glenwood girls track and field coach Cory Faust calls her.

Scarborough is believed to be the only Ram with 1,000 career kills in volleyball and 1,000 career points in basketball. She is also the lone Glenwood athlete to have won a gold medal at the state track meet and started in both the state volleyball and state basketball tournaments. In her four years of varsity competition, she earned all-state honors once in basketball and twice in volleyball.

But her senior season was unlike any other. She led the Rams to the state tournament for the second straight year in volleyball and the basketball team reached the state finals for the first time. And that’s not even the unique part.

Scarborough, like every other athlete this year, competed this season under the cloud of COVID-19.

“My senior was different,” she said. “We had COVID. That’s something everyone is going to remember. But I think we’ll remember how great of season we had, our record and how well get along as a team as a whole.”

The season was much a season of “can we get through it.”

“Having to wear a mask and not knowing if we were going to have a season or if we were going to play in a tournament or not, or if we were going to cancel this game because of a COVID outbreak, it was stressful. We had to learn to play every game like it might be our last.”

Good thing that’s Scarborough’s base operating system anyway.

Faust, who coached Scarborough and the Rams to the 2018 state track title, said Scarborough was new to track when she joined the program but showed the same enthusiasm and hyper-competitive, energetic flare she had for every sport.

“Elle is a gym rat,” Faust said. “It’s just normal for her to be doing something – in the gym, in the weight room, doing multiple sports. No days off for her. She did club basketball and club volleyball as well as playing three sports at a super high level.”

Heading into last fall, the Rams were billed as preseason contenders in Class 4A volleyball – and they lived up to the hype. They finished the regular season among the top 4 in the class and won 32 matches, a school-record. But the No. 3 seeded Rams were upset by No. 6 seeded West Delaware in the state quarterfinals. The five set heartbreaker was a devastating loss for Scarborough, earned unanimous all-state honors after the season.

“We were so close,” she said. “Being ranked higher than them especially was tough to think about. We didn’t play bad but we didn’t play our best. It’s stressful knowing we could have gone further at the state tournament but things happen for a reason. We tried our hardest and that’s all we could do.”

Volleyball improved from 17-15 her freshman year to 32-3 her senior season. Over her final two years the Rams were a combined 62-16 with the school’s first two state tournament bids.

Scarborough closed her Ram career as the school’s all-time leader in kills, a feat she accomplished midway through her JUNIOR season. It’s a record she’s proud of and cherishes now but it isn’t something she shot for nor was she even of at the time.

“Coach (Chelsey) Hirt told me I was close,” she said. “It really didn’t mean that much to me because it wasn’t just me doing it. It was my team, building up to that. It was very exciting for sure but I couldn’t have done it without my teammates so I give them a lot of the kudos.”

Scarborough could feel the volleyball program changing in her time at Glenwood. She credits that to former head coach Hirt and the collective push to be better.

“I was big on team chemistry,” Scarborough said. “I always wanted to get everybody together to make sure we were all on the same page. I definitely felt the progress throughout the years.”

The Rams basketball program followed a similar trajectory in Scarborough’s time. They finished 8-15 her freshman season. The next year, 18-5. Scarborough’s final two seasons saw Glenwood compile a combined record of 46-5 and finish both seasons at the state tournament.

As a freshman Scarborough led the Rams in scoring and rebounding. Her scoring average dipped every season after but her assists and the team’s wins, they all went up.

Glenwood basketball coach Brian Rasmussen said that win spike was due in no small part to Scarborough embracing a new role that fit her leadership skills perfectly: facilitator.

“Not a lot of kids would be okay with giving up that leading scorer role,” Rasmussen said. “Not that she couldn’t do it if need be. But she distributed the ball well and was our captain and the person who drove our ship on and off the court.  If asked, she could definitely score but her shifting roles and the changing depth allowed her to find so many other ways to contribute.”

It wasn’t an easy transition, Scarborough admits. Not at first.
“

But as I started seeing the assists and helping with rebounding and focusing on the things I could control, I saw the results. If I had an open shot, I’d go but if I saw a teammate was open I’d pass it. It was a change but I definitely got over it. Winning games for sure helped too.”

And that the Rams did. After opening Scarborough’s junior season 25-0 before falling in the Class 4A state semifinals to Council Bluffs Lewis Central her junior year – “That really hurt,” she said – the Rams were the wire-to-wire No. 1 ranked team last season. They stormed into the state finals last March and saw the school’s first ever state title within their grasp. But Ballard had other ideas. The Bombers rallied from a nine-point deficit down the stretch to win the Class 4A state title 47-45.

“We never gave up but like in volleyball sometimes things don’t go your way or the way you want them to,” Scarborough said. “Ballard had a really good defensive team and they did a good job stopping what we were doing. They were lucky enough to have a good shooter to hit some shots at the end too.”

Scarborough’s accomplishments in 2020-2021 are all the more amazing considering she did them all on a pair of sore knees. She tore a meniscus in her left knee in July and opted to rest it in lieu of surgery. She played through the pain during volleyball season and had surgery just after the season. She missed the first five Glenwood basketball games before returning. Returning perhaps a little too fast, she said.

She tore the meniscus in her right knee during basketball season. She once again played through the pain. She had surgery on that knee after the season.

“You wouldn’t know it, but she was battling that throughout the year,” Rasmussen said. “She was definitely not 100 percent but she gave 100 percent effort.”

There would be no rushing back after the second surgery. Spring track was out. Gone was her chance to help the Rams defend their 2018 state track title after 2019’s season was cancelled and gone was her chance at another gold in the shuttle hurdle relay with her teammates.

“I took a month and a half off,” she said. “I think it was best for me with volleyball but I really did try and come back to track. But things didn’t go my way. I still tried to focus on helping the team however I could.”

She helped out the track team as much as she could as a team manager.

For an athlete as active as Scarborough is, having to sit out at all was something she wasn’t accustomed to now was it something she enjoyed.

“It’s no fun sitting out,” she said.

She’s played sports pretty much year-round since she was a kid. Through her first two years of high school in the spring she would be running track while also juggling club volleyball and club basketball.

When it came time to choose which sport she would pursue in college, Scarborough had no shortage of options in both volleyball and basketball.

“It got kind of crazy and that’s when I decided I wanted to figure out where I wanted to put all my love in,” she said.
When asked if volleyball is that first love, she didn’t hesitate, “Of for sure.”

But then follows up it up with, “I used to think basketball but as I started to excel more in volleyball and with the team aspects of it, I fell in love with it more and more everyday.”

Scarborough signed with Division II St. Cloud State University in Minnesota last fall. She is expected to play outside hitter for the Huskies.

“I might have a chance to play,” she said. “I just need to keep working hard and hopefully I get a chance to play at least a little bit.”
Scarborough zeroed in on the St. Cloud State early in the recruiting process but she had plenty of suitors and some Division 1 walk-on offers to mull.

“I really liked the coaches,” she said of St. Cloud State, who competes in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. “It’s a little farther away but the campus is beautiful and I clicked with the coaches and everything just felt right when I went up there.”

When asked how it feels to close out the Glenwood chapter of her athletic career as one of the school’s most decorated athletes whose fingerprints appear all over the record books, she shrugs it off.

“Honestly, personal records aren’t that big of deal to me,” she said. “I’ve tried my best in every sport.”

Her favorite memory of her senior season isn’t a play or a victory or even a big shot or a big kill in a crucial moment – it’s a quiet moment with her teammates.

“After the state tournament loss to Ballard, coming out of the locker that last time, getting to hug my coaches and teammates, that’s where I felt, ‘This is the end.’ I knew I wasn’t going to be running track and that was kind of it for my high school sports career. It capped it off for me.”

That’s who Scarborough is – on and off the court – according to Rasmussen, who first coached her as fourth grader.

“She certainly received a lot of awards over the years but it was never about the accolades,” he said. She always was team first and never wanted to let anybody down, coaches or teammates. She lived for the competition, excelled under pressure, and played for the love of her team. What more can you ask for?”