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Archive for the ‘Volleyball’ Category

Young spikers go toe-to-toe!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , , on October 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Eryn Wood played strongly Monday as the Coupeville JV spikers battled South Whidbey through three torrid sets. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Second match, same as the first.

The JV volleyball squads from Coupeville and South Whidbey played twice this season, and the result was identical – the Wolves roll early, the Falcons swoop in at the end.

Monday, CHS roared to a lopsided win in the opening set, crushing the visitors 25-15, but then came up short in the final two frames, falling 25-19, 25-13.

The loss drops Coupeville’s young guns to 3-4 in North Sound Conference play, 5-5 overall.

Just like the first time these two JV teams faced off, back in late Sept. in Langley, the Wolves came out all guns firing.

Monday, Zoe Trujillo elevated and ripped a rival’s knee cap off with a ferocious spike to open the match, and that was just the beginning.

A nasty ace off the fingertips of Lucy Sandahl, followed by a block from Abby Mulholland and a kill from Izzy Wells, and Coupeville had a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.

Raven Vick and Sandahl each ripped off stellar runs at the service line to pad the lead, with Trujillo providing the snappiest point when she slipped in from the left side at the last second to drop a running tip which had the Falcons swinging at nothing but air.

Once again, Coupeville looked like it would put the match away in the second set, jumping out to a lead.

But once again, that lead slipped away, never to be regained.

Maddie Vondrak unleashed like a coiled spring exploding, driving a ball between two defenders for a kill, then immediately struck again, this time dancing in air while using just the tips of her fingers to reach up and snuff out a would-be-Falcon point.

That followed a sensational smash off the back line from Kylie Van Velkinburgh, and things were sailing along nicely. Until they weren’t.

The Wolves didn’t trail until 17-16, but once they found themselves on the short end of the score, they couldn’t get back in front.

Trujillo made a spectacular running save on one point, however, popping the ball back into play.

That gave Vondrak a chance to arc a high, looping shot over her shoulder, with the ball splashing down deep on the other side of the net for an unexpected, and thrilling, point.

With their swing players (Sandahl, Vondrak, Vick and Trujillo) unavailable in the third set, CHS coach Chris Smith went to his freshmen in the final frame, and they put up a strong effort against more seasoned foes.

Eryn Wood and Noelle Daigneault caught the spotlight, with the former dropping in several winners with a variety of sweet hits, while the latter lashed a booming ace on her very first serve.

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Gut check time!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , on October 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Scout Smith soars for a ball Thursday night. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

The Wolf spikers are 7-2 on the season, tied for second-place in the North Sound Conference.

Chelsea Prescott (left) and Emma Smith rise up and deny.

You can find the measure of a team in how it responds when it’s at its lowest moment.

With that in mind, the next few days will tell us a lot about the 2018 Coupeville High School volleyball squad.

Coming in to Thursday’s home match with Cedar Park Christian, the Wolves were flying high, their only loss coming at the hands of King’s, the defending 1A state champs.

Blessed with big hitters, strong servers and a nimble setter in Scout Smith, CHS had the markings of a team which seemed primed to make a run at a second-straight trip to the state tourney.

And the Wolves still could.

While it suffered a major stumble Thursday, falling in five sets to a school it swept 3-0 the first time around, and doing so by continually misfiring and having to fight back from deficits, this is still a very-talented team.

Now, these Wolves, led by seniors Ashley Menges and Emma Smith, will have to brush off their 25-18, 23-25, 25-18, 19-25, 15-5 loss to the Eagles and prove they are as mentally tough as they are skilled.

This weekend, Coupeville travels to Eastern Washington for the 14-team Wenatchee Invite, where the Wolves will get a chance to work out the kinks against much-bigger schools.

Monday, Oct. 15 brings a major gut-check, as CHS hosts South Whidbey, which it edged in five titanic sets the first time around.

The Wolves (4-2 in league, 7-2 overall) and Falcons (4-2, 7-4) are tied for second-place in the North Sound Conference, two back of King’s (6-0, 9-1) and a game up on Cedar Park (3-3, 7-4) with four to play.

Granite Falls (1-5, 3-7) and Sultan (0-6, 3-7) bring up the rear.

The loss to CPC was a largely self-inflicted one, as the Wolves piled up hitting errors, blunting their often-ferocious attack.

Emma Smith and Menges combined to stuff an Eagle spike in the early going, knotting things up at 3-3 in the first set, but things quickly spiraled out of control.

Coupeville’s only lead in the opening frame was at 2-1, and it fell behind by as many as eight points, allowing CPC to claim first blood.

The second set was better, if not a smashing success, as the Wolves never trailed by more than a single point.

Chelsea Prescott and Emma Smith brought out the big hammers, drilling winners which ripped holes through the fabric of time and space, while Hannah Davidson dropped a superb tip winner which froze all the Eagles in place.

The Wolves went ahead for good at 19-18, after Maya Toomey-Stout bounced a spike off of a girl’s elbow, then “The Gazelle” topped herself several plays later when she lasered a winner while hanging in mid-air at mid-court.

But, as quickly as Coupeville found its mojo, it lost it again, trailing from the first serve to the final aborted spike in the third set.

Toomey-Stout and Emma Smith delivered big kills in frame three, but the Wolves, normally a very-efficient team at the service stripe, struggled to sustain any runs.

The best play in set three was a desperation one, in which Menges, crashing to her knees, threw out an arm and kept a seemingly-dead play alive, setting up an eventual winner from Davidson.

Things turned really dark in the early moments of the fourth set, with CHS falling behind 7-1.

But Toomey-Stout came bounding down the middle, took a jack rabbit jump in front of the net and speared the ball for a winner, injecting a jolt of electricity through her teammates and the (unfairly) sparse crowd.

Scout Smith, mainlining some of her running mate’s energy, out-fought an Eagle as they both went for a tip winner at the same moment.

Flexing her biceps, the Wolf junior held her ground (while in the air), forcing the ball up and over her foe’s fingertips, then pumping her fist as it slapped down and skidded away for a winner.

Coupeville claimed its first lead of the set at 11-10 and never surrendered it, with Prescott tagging balls off of wayward Eagles, Emma Smith ripping off arms with her kills and Toomey-Stout going “Maya Oh My” on one nuclear detonation of a put-away.

But when you spend all night digging yourself out of holes, you burn through a lot of energy, and it showed in the fifth and deciding set.

Other than one nice kill from Emma Smith, the final frame was a series of balls hitting Wolf hands and shooting off to the side, and despite several time outs, Coupeville couldn’t put a halt to a final tsunami of Eagle points.

The final score, and the night as a whole, left CHS coach Cory Whitmore drained.

“We have things to work on, and we will,” he said as he rubbed his temples. “I’m excited we took it to five sets, when we weren’t headed that way, and, overall, we passed better.

“This weekend will be a good opportunity for us.”

Toomey-Stout paced the Wolves Thursday with 14 kills, nine digs and two aces, while Emma Mathusek went low for 13 gigs and Scout Smith passed out 29 assists.

Prescott (six kills, five digs, two aces), Emma Smith (11 kills), Menges (three aces) and Davidson (four kills) all chipped in, with swing player Zoe Trujillo firing off a kill on the first play she was on the floor.

 

To see everything John Fisken shot Thursday, pop over to:

https://www.johnsphotos.net/Sports/Coupeville-Volleyball-2018-2019/VB-2018-10-11-vs-CPC/

And remember, purchases help fund scholarships for CHS senior student/athletes.

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JV serves up another win!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , , on October 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Jaimee Masters was electric at the service line Thursday, sparking the Coupeville JV volleyball squad to a comeback win. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Give your foes a glimmer of hope, then crush their dreams.

Using every player on the roster Thursday, the Coupeville High School JV volleyball squad stormed back from down a set to blitz visiting Cedar Park Christian, turning a tense match into a runaway win.

While the Eagles slipped away with the opening set 26-24, after blowing a seven-point lead and wasting two set points, it was all Wolves, all day, as soon as the squads switched sides of the floor.

Coupeville blistered the visitors 25-16 in the second set, then took the third set, and the win, with a 25-19 frame in which the Wolf freshmen carried the load.

The win, the team’s third-straight, lifts the JV to 3-3 in North Sound Conference play, 5-4 overall.

CHS coach Chris Smith mixed up his lineup a bit more than normal Thursday, used all 13 of his players, and got big-time plays from everyone on the court.

While the Wolves ultimately dropped the opening set, they displayed an admirable scrappiness, battling back from an 11-4 deficit to knot the set up at 19-19, 22-22 and 24-24.

After failing to win a point through its first four servers, Coupeville finally broke through on the wicked hot arm of Willow Vick.

Her first serve set up a roundhouse spike from Zoe Trujillo, then Vick ripped off a knee-buckling ace to start the comeback.

The Wolves fought all the way back to tie the set at 19 when Lucy Sandahl spun a ball off of her fingertips while on the move, dropping a tip winner between two flailing rivals.

From there, the opening set became a war of attrition.

Maddie Vondrak bounded to the ceiling to pound home a winner, Raven Vick scorched a nasty ace, but a truly awful call by the ref swung things back to CPC, which closed out the set.

From their demeanor, it was tough to tell the Wolves were down a set, however, as they bounced around, full of energy and ready to bring the pain.

Sandahl started things off with a nice run at the service line, then Jaimee Masters took things to another level, ripping off seven straight winners, punctuated by a  low, screaming ace which tore a chunk out of a CPC player’s toe.

Inspired by her teammate’s serving prowess, Vondrak got funky, dancing this way and that, blocking two shots in a row with just the top of her fingertips, before swinging the hammer on a spike that sealed the deal.

Riding the wave of emotion, Coupeville’s freshmen (Izzy Wells, Noelle Daigneault, Eryn Wood, Abby Mulholland, Kylie Van Velkinburgh and Anya Leavell) teamed with sophomores Ivy Leedy and Abby Meyers to do most of the damage down the stretch.

Wells opened the final set with eight consecutive points on serve, then, after a nifty kill from the middle of the floor by Leavell, it was time for Daigneault to get down and dirty.

Back-to-back aces from the freshman Homecoming princess blew the lead out to 11-1, with the Wolves eventually stretching the margin all the way to 22-9.

Van Velkinburgh sprawled out on the floor to keep one crucial rally going, while Mulholland froze two rivals with a tip winner, and things looked to be about three seconds from ending.

Give CPC some credit, though, as they closed on a 10-2 run with at least two winners catching the last flake of paint on the back line.

Smith never panicked, however, and neither did his youngest players, as he left them on the floor to close out the win. Which they promptly did.

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Scorch the gym!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , on October 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »

The gym may catch on fire. (Poster courtesy Charlotte Young)

Want to get a jump start on making your volleyball future all it can be?

The Whidbey Volleyball Club opened registration for a new season Oct. 1, and tryouts are set for Oct. 28 (U14) and Nov. 18 (U15 and above).

For younger players who want to fine-tune their skills and prep for said tryouts, the club is offering a two-hour skills clinic at Coupeville High School Oct. 21.

The clinic, which runs from 2-4 PM, is open to players 14 and under, and all you need is a USAV tryout membership ($5) to participate.

For more info, pop over to:

https://sites.google.com/view/whidbeyvolleyballclub/

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Spikers soar in Sultan!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , on October 9, 2018| 1 Comment »

Sophomore Chelsea Prescott chipped in with eight digs and two aces Tuesday as Coupeville volleyball crushed Sultan in straight sets. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

“They’re stuffing you like a great big green pepper!”

The commentator on the TurkTV internet feed Tuesday knew what was up — Sultan was getting whupped, and Coupeville was holding the paddle.

Kicking into high gear after a brief slow start, the Wolf spikers rained down holy terror on their hosts, rolling to a 25-23, 25-9, 25-14 victory which keeps them a game out of first-place in league action.

With the win, Coupeville soars to 4-1 in North Sound Conference play (right behind 5-0 King’s) and 7-1 overall.

The Wolves kick off the second half of the league season Thursday, when they host Cedar Park Christian (2-3, 6-4), before zipping off to Eastern Washington for Saturday’s 14-team Wenatchee Invite.

Tuesday, Coupeville faced off with a team which played much better than its win-less record in league play might indicate.

The Turks jumped on a rare bit of service misfire from the Wolves in the first set, staying close until CHS found another gear to close things out.

“We missed eight serves, which were infectious, and putting those serves in creates a different story,” said Coupeville coach Cory Whitmore. “And while we didn’t serve well in the first, they played very clean.”

Once they got past their brief hiccup, the Wolves reverted to the big-hitting, precision-passing squad their fans are used to seeing.

“I was happy to see us turn it around, only making five hitting errors total in the second set,” Whitmore said. “We passed and served well and carried that momentum into the third and maintained a lead the entire way.

“I’m proud of the way that we turned around and fixed exactly what we needed to.”

Front-row smashers Emma Smith and Hannah Davidson were in perfect sync, both finishing the night without a single hitting error.

With Scout Smith lofting 21 assists to go along with her four aces, the Wolf big hitters had plenty of opportunities to launch wicked spikes.

Maya Toomey-Stout led the way with 10 kills, while Emma Smith tallied six and Davidson launched four.

Toomey-Stout, who also scraped nine digs off the floor and ripped off a pair of service aces, earned another big compliment from the TurkTV crew.

As “The Gazelle” hung in mid-air for an eternity before launching one missile, the awe-struck announcer blurted out “I think she can jump to the moon and back!”

While Toomey-Stout’s aerial ballet earned her some new fans, she got a lot of help from her teammates.

Chelsea Prescott collected eight digs and two aces, Ashley Menges fired off five aces, Emma Mathusek went low for three digs and swing player Zoe Trujillo popped onto the floor to rip off an ace of her own.

 

JV:

Led by a big serving performance from Jaimee Masters, the Wolf young guns thrashed the Turks 25-13, 25-18.

The win, the team’s second-straight, lifts the JV to 2-3 in league play, 4-4 overall.

Coupeville dominated in all aspects of the game, from Lucy Sandahl lofting 17 superb assists, to Masters torching the Turks for seven service aces, to the Wolves sharing duty when it came time to smash put-aways.

Maddie Vondrak peppered Sultan for five kills, while Willow Vick smashed four and the tandem of Trujillo and Raven Vick laced three winners apiece.

The Vicks were equal opportunity killers, combining to launch seven service aces, with Willow narrowly edging her twin sister 4-3.

Freshmen Abby Mulholland and Anya Leavell also saw floor time for the JV, as all seven Wolves to take the court played as one.

“Overall we controlled the ball well and played in system,” said Coupeville coach Chris Smith. “The hitters performed well, keeping us on the plus side for our hitting percentage.”

 

C-TEAM:

With the win in hand, Smith went to his bench for the third set.

While the Wolves fell 25-15, their coach saw many positives.

“Set three, our younger players got some valuable floor time,” Smith said. “Although we came up short in that set, the experience helps identify areas of focus going forward in practice.”

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