Wolf seniors (l to r) Lyla Stuurmans, Jada Heaton, and Taylor Brotemarkle are off to a great start. (Jennifer Heaton photo)
The gym was different, the result the same.
Playing at home for the first time this season Thursday, the Coupeville High School varsity volleyball squad kept its perfect streak going.
Sweeping visiting Mount Vernon Christian 25-17, 25-15, 25-7 on Madison McMillan’s cake day, the Wolves get to 2-0 in Northwest 2B/1B League play, 3-0 overall.
They haven’t dropped a set in regular season play, and certainly weren’t about to start against the Hurricanes.
Other than brief burps at the start of the first two sets, CHS led start to finish, with spry setter Katie Marti flying around, feeding a variety of big hitters who hammered winners upon winners.
MVC did lead 3-2 in the opening set, but then the Wolves promptly roared to life.
Bounding all around the court, Lyla Stuurmans and Teagan Calkins took turns delivering crisp winners which sliced off kneecaps and left the Hurricanes to wonder if their life insurance policies were paid up.
When the duo wasn’t banging away, they also delivered savage barbs with a poke here, a tip there, always keeping the ball just out of range of their rival hitters.
Add in some titanic mashes exploding off of the deadly fingers of Mia Farris as she swooped in from the side, and Jada Heaton up on her toes, ready to dominate at the net, and Coupeville was in full-on kill mode.
The ever-calm (even on her birthday) McMillan and the indispensable Taylor Brotemarkle dug deep to pull balls off the floor, with Marti cavorting from side to side, taking their setups and lofting the ball to her snipers.
Birthday girl Madison McMillan contemplates how hard she would have to hit the volleyball to make it explode. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Flush from the success of the first set, the second frame went down much the same.
Coupeville dominated, the Hurricanes fought back with a never-say-die spirit, and then the Wolves beat the air right out of the ball.
Farris, in full-on Mia the Magnificent mode, lashed a huge spike that tore off a chunk of the floor.
To which Stuurmans responded, “I can do that too,” as she bounded skyward and sent a missile screaming past a Hurricane defender who wisely decided that no, she didn’t really want to try and return that one.
Enter “The Red Dragon,” AKA Teagan Calkins, who, perhaps channeling Austin Powers, stated that she too liked to live dangerously.
And by live dangerously, she meant “hit the volleyball so hard it goes blind.”
Teagan Calkins drops a winner. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
If MVC thought the explosion at the power factory was done after the second set, it was sadly mistaken, since set three was nothing but non-stop bicep-poppin’, big-hittin’ fun for the Wolves.
McMillan punctuated her day of birth by firing a bullet which caught the corner of the court for a point, and a look at this reporter’s notebook reveals the following from set #3:
“Lyla bomb.”
“Mia laser.”
“Lyla mash.”
“Mia freakin’ massacred the ball.”
At the end of the fireworks show, the night’s final point was maybe the most impressive, while featuring artistry over pure firepower.
Scrambling madly towards the CHS bench (with a 24-7 lead), Marti stretched out to her full length and caught an out-of-control ball before it could get away.
Spinning it back over her head, she (somehow) sent it on a dime to Stuurmans, who sliced the ball across the top of the net.
Startled that the ball was coming back in her direction after the play seemed all but dead, a Hurricane hitter punched at the ball and sent it sailing far away into the night, ending things and sending the Wolves into a celebration.
In a match in which 10 girls hit the floor — Tenley Stuurmans, Aby Wood, and Dakota Strong also got floor time late — Coupeville got the nod of approval from coach Cory Whitmore.
“It was good to work through a couple of things,” he said. “We looked pretty sharp and controlled the first ball pretty well.
“What’s exciting about this group is they find the hitter with the hot hand, even if that changes from set to set and night to night.”
Milestone moments:
Both Calkins and Marti hit round numbers recently, Whitmore said.
Marti, a senior, nailed her 100th career ace at the service stripe during last weekend’s SunDome Volleyball Festival, and sits at 105 and counting.
Meanwhile, Calkins, a junior, reached 100 career kills during the last regular season match against Friday Harbor. With six more Thursday against MVC, she’s up to 112 for her prep career.
Thursday stats:
Taylor Brotemarkle — 6 digs
Teagan Calkins — 6 kills, 4 digs, 3 aces
Mia Farris — 4 kills, 9 digs, 2 aces
Jada Heaton— 1 kill, 1 dig
Katie Marti — 2 kills, 8 digs, 19 assists, 1 block assist, 2 aces
Madison McMillan — 4 kills, 12 digs, 2 aces
Lyla Stuurmans — 10 kills, 7 digs, 1 solo block, 1 block assist, 1 ace
Tenley Stuurmans — 1 ace
Coupeville Sports 