Top potato: Shelley multi-faceted star among state leaders in No. 2 sport

SHELLEY — Senior Mallory Higham is the 5A volleyball All-State Player of the Year, and a frontrunner for the Shelley High School class of 2026 valedictorian.

If that isn’t enough, Higham led the Russets to a fourth-place at the 5A girls’ golf state championship, finishing third individually to earn the East Idaho Sports girls’ golf Player of the Year.

“She’s so skilled,” said Shelley head golf coach Wallace Foster. “She puts in a lot of time and work. Her mental game is really, really good. She never beats herself — she plays smart and just doesn’t make a lot of mistakes.”

At 5-foot-10, Higham uses her height for leverage to launch the ball off the tee, but she has a soft touch around the greens, allowing her to finish holes as strong as she starts them.

“Se can hit all the shots,” Foster said.

When Foster took the job as Shelley golf coach five years ago, the Russets didn’t have enough girls to field a team. Then, “thankfully,” he said, Higham showed up the next year and immediately became one of the top players in the state and a clear leader.

Because she comes from a golfing family — with a father and brothers who all played at Shelley — Higham has a clear grasp of the preparation side of the game.

She is unlike any other high school golfer Foster has known when it comes to preparing for a round. When she arrives at the course in the morning, she knows what she is going to hit off the tee on the 14th hole. That level of preparation has rubbed off on her Russet teammates.

And when it comes to the mental side of the game, Higham, Shelley’s setter on the volleyball team, never lets her emotions slide. The headstrong focus it takes to be an A-student and potential valedictorian also puts her in a good place to think with the course, her own play and the competition.

“She really knows how to compartmentalize stuff, and manage a bunch of different things at the same time,” Foster said.

In fact, Higham so rarely gives away strokes that Foster said he and other observers were surprised when she took a one-shot penalty at the state tournament.

“She hit one in the water, and we were all shocked,” he said. “I don’t remember taking a penalty shot in about three or four years.

“What’s crazy is, she wants to play volleyball in college and not golf,” the coach added.

Higham shot 76-80-156 (+12) to finish just seven shots back of the individual champion, Gracee Payne (+5), from Twin Falls. With Higham as their low scorer, the Russets finished with a 742 (+166) and a fourth-place trophy — the program’s first girls’ golf trophy in over a decade, according to Wallace.