Rampart girls volleyball coach Nikki Bloemen steps down

Less than a year after winning Rampart’s first girls volleyball state championship in program history, coach Nikki Bloemen is stepping down from the program.

Bloemen will remain a teacher at the school, but her focus is turning more toward her family. She and her husband, Pat – the offensive coordinator for the Rampart football team – welcomed a baby girl just over a year ago.

For the last eight years she has served as leader and mentor to the girls who came through the volleyball program. While she has cherished every moment of it, she now has the desire to turn that energy toward her family.

“Coaching has been my life for eight years,” Bloemen said. “Every parent knows that kids change things, and I wasn’t able to be the best mother, wife and coach that I could be, so I knew that something had to give.”

Bloemen’s ties to Rampart are deep. She played volleyball for the Rams and parlayed her career into a scholarship to the University of Colorado. After one season in Boulder, she transferred closer to home to finish her playing career at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.

In her three years with the Mountain Lions, she totaled 880 kills. She graduated and moved into a teaching career and started coaching when she joined the staff at Doherty. After completing her student teaching, she was hired as an English teacher at Rampart, where the volleyball coaching job was also open.

She took the team to the state tournament in her first year and came out of pool play after a thrilling come-from-behind win over Chaparral.

She put together some solid seasons over the next few years but wouldn’t get back to the state tournament until 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the 2020 tournament to spring 2021 and that’s where she helped the Rams claim a state crown. It was perhaps her most memorable moment as head coach, but she has valued the overall experience.

“The state championship was the individual highlight,” “But along the way it’s the little pieces like the relationship I built with kids in my time with the Rampart volleyball program.”

Bloemen finished her career with a 143-56 overall record. Her family life might be pulling her away from the game now, but there is a possibility that the coaching window could  be open sometime down the road.

“It could be,” she said. “Right now I’m just looking to spend time with my daughter and watch her grow up. I feel like I’ve missed so much, and she’s started to get fun. We’ll see what happens as my kids get older. I might get that itch.”