Coupeville’s injured reserve includes veterans Sydney Autio (left) and McKayla Bailey. (John Fisken photos)
Freshman Lauren Rose (9) has become the team’s starting setter. Here she hangs out with Kailey Kellner (left) and McKenzie Bailey.
They are a young team and it shows at times.
With two freshmen and a sophomore starting, two veterans sidelined with injuries and their spark-plug playing in just her first regular match of the season, the Coupeville High School volleyball squad bounced all over the place Thursday night.
When they were clicking, they had moments of brilliance — big hits from Hailey Hammer, strong hustle from Valen Trujillo and Kacie Kiel, often electrifying work from McKenzie Bailey and the just-returned Madeline Strasburg.
But when they were off, they were very, very off and it eventually hurt them, as the Wolves fell 21-25, 25-9, 25-10, 25-19 to visiting Mount Vernon Christian.
The non-conference loss dropped Coupeville to 0-4.
While the end result wasn’t what she was hoping for, Wolf coach Breanne Smedley did appreciate how her squad came out to start the match.
“We controlled the ball well in the first set and and played our pace,” Smedley said. “They (MVC) picked up their offense after that. They were very speedy and we hadn’t seen a lot of that before.
“We had some strings of great volleyball,” she added. “We just couldn’t quite string enough of those together.”
The Wolves, who will be without senior McKayla Bailey (shoulder surgery) and junior Sydney Autio (ankle in a boot) the rest of the season, will have time to work out the kinks.
They don’t play again until Oct. 7, when they host Bellevue Christian.
Coupeville would like to recapture the first-set magic it displayed against the Hurricanes Thursday and keep it percolating through an entire match.
With Hammer and Strasburg pounding the ball with fury, the Wolves pulled out a set that was more like a war. Neither team led by more than four points and there were nine ties, the last at 21-21.
CHS netted that last tie when Hammer rose into the skies and delivered a blistering spike that peeled paint off the gym floor.
Sparked by their senior leader, the Wolves closed out the set with freshman Lauren Rose at the service stripe.
MVC was unable to get returns back over the net on three of her four serves, and, the one time they did, Hammer dropped the boom, sending Hurricanes scattering in a wild race for cover.
Unfortunately, right at the moment when it should have been riding high, something largely clicked off for Coupeville.
The next two sets, while they had scattered moments of pleasure, were rough to watch.
Frequent miscommunication between players allowed a ton of balls to fall in, and not even Trujillo valiantly shredding her knees diving to the floor in pursuit of endless Hurricane spikes could stem the tide.
But then, as young, inconsistent teams often do, the Wolves suddenly flipped the switch again — this time for the positive — and hopes of pushing the match to a fifth set began to look quite promising.
Charging back behind Hammer and Strasburg, Coupeville erased a 13-8 fourth-set deficit and knotted things up at 17 when Hammer smashed a ball off the last millimeter of the back line, sending a roar through her teammates and fans.
Then click, it all went away again, as Mt. Vernon used its superior height to regain control of the net and the match.
The Wolves final two points came only when Hurricane serves sailed long.
Hammer paced Coupeville with nine kills and Bailey added three. Trujillo tallied 13 digs, Rose handed out 15 assists, while Strasburg had 11 digs, three kills and four service aces.
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