Coupeville Sports

“I will devour your soul, sister!!” Sweet-natured Maddie Vondrak transforms into the volleyball wrecking machine known as The Mad Masher. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

“Wolves on three.”

A surreal season ended on a surreal note.

Less than 24 hours after celebrating Senior Night in front of a fairly-full gym, the Coupeville High School varsity volleyball squad closed its season Saturday by thrashing visiting Orcas Island in a mostly-empty house.

No fans were allowed to attend — to honor a request by the Vikings as positive Covid cases rise in the San Juans — though rest content in the knowledge that a handful of teenage girls can make as much noise, if not more, than any group of paying customers.

And the Wolves had plenty to hoot and holler about, as they strolled to a 25-12, 25-12, 25-14 win to finish 6-3 during this pandemic-altered season.

Coupeville, which finished second in the seven-team Northwest 2B/1B League, lost only to two-time defending state champ La Conner, and they made the Braves work as hard as anyone.

While he loses seniors Maddie Vondrak, Chelsea Prescott, Jaimee Masters, and Kylie Chernikoff, Wolf coach Cory Whitmore has a roster which features one junior and six fast-rising sophomores.

In the aftermath of Saturday’s win, as his players celebrated their success and mourned the end of their time together, Whitmore had a satisfied smile peeking out from under his face mask.

“We all have a lot of love for these seniors,” he said. “They were a great support crew for the younger players, like the seniors before them were for them.

“It’s really fun to see the impact these seniors had on our sophomores, and all they passed down.”

With all the obstacles this group of Wolves faced — a new league and classification, the loss of eight seniors, the pandemic — Whitmore was thrilled to see them accept every challenge.

“They tried new things, adapted, accepted feedback, and really were peaking by the end of the season, the right time,” he said. “I’m very proud of this team, and these seniors.”

Saturday’s match was essentially over one play into things.

Orcas served, there was a brief rally, then Prescott came sliding in, dropping the hammer of the gods, her power-packed right arm spiking a winner which split a pair of Vikings and skidded away.

Game, set, match.

Almost.

The Vikings did hang around for another hour or so, but they spent much of their time admiring the Wolf big hitters at work.

Prescott, Chernikoff, and Vondrak took turns getting wicked, spraying winners to all angles and showing their young teammates the way things are done.

Toss in strong runs at the service stripe from Alita Blouin, Maddie Georges, and Abby Mulholland, quality work in the trenches from Masters, and big plays at the net from twin titans Jill Prince and Lucy Tenore, and Orcas was doomed.

The end of the match offered up a perfect mix of the present (soon to be the past), and the future, for the Wolf volleyball program.

Up 22-13 in the third set, Coupeville collected its third to last point of the season thanks to one last, blisteringly brutal spike from the college-bound Prescott.

Stalking away in triumph, the young woman who first made varsity as a freshman celebrated with her contemporaries, then, metaphorically at least, turned over the keys to the car to the next generation.

Sophomores Gwen Gustafson and Ryanne Knoblich, who were on the court at the end, are part of that rising group of sophomore stars, with Tenore, Prince, Blouin, and Georges.

The final point, appropriately, came from one of the veterans, however.

Chernikoff, a fountain of joy over the past six years, from her days as a middle school track sensation to her current status as a volleyball killing machine, strolled to the service stripe, thunked the ball off the floor, then fired a note-perfect career capper.

Her low, sinking fireball ripped off a finger or two as it turned into set point #25 and match point #75, officially ending things.

One group moves on, another moves in, and Whitmore, with 55 wins in 4.5 seasons, rolls on, building something special.