Coupeville Sports

    Sydney Aparicio, seen here returning a ball in a match earlier this season, was one of many Wolves to sacrifice her body diving for balls against Cedarcrest. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

It didn’t last long enough, but there was a little something for everyone at Tuesday night’s Coupeville-Cedarcrest volleyball match.

A couple of truly impressive, knee-rattling spikes flying off of the finger tips of Cedarcrest players, which seemed to please their fans, and their coach, when he wasn’t checking his cell phone repeatedly during the third set.

Tremendous hustle from a Coupeville squad that refused to roll over and play dead against a top 2A school, with Sydney Aparicio flinging herself repeatedly onto the floor in pursuit of balls and Allie Hanigan and Megan Oakes jointly crashing through their team bench in pursuit of a ball.

Player mom and Wolf supporter supreme Aimee Bishop getting an already-loud student section to go bonkers right as Hailey Hammer and Madeline Strasburg delivered booming spikes of their own.

The end result, a 25-9, 25-16, 25-11 loss to the visiting Red Wolves, wasn’t the best capper on the evening. But if you focus on the moments in between, and not the loss as a whole, which dropped Coupeville to 2-7 overall, 1-7 in Cascade Conference play, there was much to be happy about.

Other than a few moments where Cedarcrest ace Valerie Koch got rolling behind the service stripe and threw down a bunch of points in a hurry, things were fairly close.

Breeanna Messner opened the scoring with a nice little tip that froze the Cedarcrest defense in place and a few moments later Hannigan emulated the slick move, tying the score at 3-3. Then Koch got molten-hot to the tune of nine straight points, until Haley Sherman stepped up, said “No, ma’am!” and snapped the run with a laser shot that nipped the line.

Coupeville put together a couple of nice runs — including one in the third set that was fueled by another picture-perfect Messner tip that split the defenders, a nice spike from Hannigan and a hustle play by Katie Kiel to breathe new life into a rally that seemed dead. Toss in strong efforts by Lauren Escalle and Amanda Fabrizi (with injured star Bessie Walstad acting as an unpaid, but active, assistant coach) and hope still burns for Wolf volleyball.

Early in the evening, the Wolf JV squad fell 25-8, 25-8, 25-12 in a match that featured a smashing performance by Sydney Autio — especially in the third set — strong all-around play from Kenzie Kooch, Kacie Kiel and McKenzie Bailey and a portrait-worthy tip by Rhiannon Ellsworth.