Former CHS volleyball guru Toni Crebbin lays down some smack. “You come for the queen, you better not miss!!”
Pump the brakes on the hype train, at least a little bit.
While the 2019 Coupeville High School volleyball squad is off to an impressive 6-0 start, and will look to make it seven straight Saturday at Orcas Island, the current Wolves still have a ways to go to catch the standard bearers.
That’s the 2004 edition, a team which was ranked #1 in the state polls, and a team which reeled off 10 straight wins to open its season.
Those Wolves, led by all-timers like Mindy Horr, Kirsty Croghan, and Taniel Lamb, finished 14-3, rose to the top of the polls by routing the best team in 1A, and narrowly missed out on a state trophy.
Two of those losses came against the team which claimed 2nd at state, La Conner, a team Coupeville also beat twice.
When coach Toni Crebbin and her squad opened the 2004 season, they were in the Northwest A/B League, which had undergone a change from the previous year.
Archbishop Murphy had moved out, while Mount Vernon Christian, Darrington, and Shoreline Christian had moved in, joining Coupeville, Concrete, Friday Harbor, Orcas Island, and the defending league champs, La Conner.
The Wolves started hot, and never really cooled off.
After opening with a four-set win over 2A Lakewood, CHS won the Lopez Island Tournament (which doesn’t count in their win/loss record), stuffing four teams in order.
Coupeville polished off Orcas, Bridgeport, and Lopez, then demolished Liberty Bell in the tourney championship.
After that, the Wolves had a strong showing at the South Whidbey Invite, despite 12 of the 16 teams in attendance being 2A or larger.
That was all preamble to the league season, a time when CHS tore through foe after foe.
Led by seven seniors — Lamb, Horr, Laura Crandall, Heather Davis, Annie Larson, Heather Fakkema, and Kristina Morris — and featuring the explosive hitting of Croghan, those Wolves were, in some ways, a mirror image of the 2019 squad.
This year’s team features eight seniors, and a big hitter in Chelsea Prescott, who, like Croghan, is still an underclassman.
The 2004 team waxed Mount Vernon Christian, Darrington, Friday Harbor, Concrete, and Shoreline Christian to get to 6-0 and enter the state polls at #6.
Two tough matches were right around the corner, but the Wolves showed off their grit by pulling out five-set wins against both Orcas and La Conner, with both bouts decided 16-14 in the final frame.
That pushed Coupeville up to #5 in the polls, before wins over Friday Harbor and Concrete sent CHS all the way out to 10-0 and a #3 state ranking.
In every story a little rain must fall, though, and perfection ended in the very next match.
Facing La Conner with the league title at stake, the Wolves fell just short, losing 3-1.
To which, to a woman, they said, “Ha!” and came roaring right back with some of their best volleyball of the season.
Squaring off with La Conner again less than 24 hours after their loss, Coupeville avenged its honor, bouncing the Braves in a tiebreaker match, earning league and district titles in the process.
That assured the Wolves of a berth in the state tourney, as well, but they weren’t done.
They promptly swept Bellevue Christian 3-0, then whacked top-ranked Bush (and its star player, a U-Dub recruit) 3-1, to exit districts with the top seed.
The state voters noticed, and, for the first time in school history, the Wolf spikers, at 13-1, ascended to the #1 ranking in the 1A polls.
Flush with success, Coupeville rode a roller coaster ride at the state tourney, opening with a 3-1 win over Zillah for its program-record 14th win, before falling 3-1 to its old nemesis, La Conner.
Having taken the season split with the Braves, the Wolves still had a chance to advance to the 4th/7th place game, and seemed like they were well on their way, taking the first two sets in their next match.
Up 25-19, 25-14 on Freeman, things looked sensational … until they didn’t.
The third set, a taut affair, went to the “bad guys” 25-23, then Freeman rolled 25-16 in the fourth to send the match to a fifth, and deciding, frame.
While the final set normally goes to 15, you still have to win by two points, and both teams weren’t ready to leave the court, stretching things out.
Trailing 15-14 and facing match point, Coupeville got a huge kill off the back line from Croghan, before Fakkema dropped a little bump into a gap to push the Wolves in front.
From there, the action went back and forth, before ending 22-20 in favor of Freeman, the match ending on a savage service ace.
While the Wolves fell just short of earning their first state trophy in volleyball, the team racked up big-time stats in their finale.
Horr, in the final match of a career in which she was the best setter the school has seen, before, then, or now, flipped 43 assists to her teammates.
Lamb smacked 17 kills and hit on 17-18 serves, while Crandall, a Videoville/Miriam’s Espresso alumnus (so, bonus points), was 22-23 on serves and thunked 11 kills at the net.
Whether their season ended on a win or a loss, the 2004 spikers remain the gold standard for the program.
The 2017 CHS volleyball squad, the first to return to state since Crebbin’s best squad, won 13 matches under Cory Whitmore, and now this year’s team is making a run at the best start to a season.
The current Wolves are shooting for the stars.
If they get there, the 2004 squad will be there to welcome them to the top of the mountain.
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