South Whidbey’s Sara Bryant (left) and Coupeville’s Hope Lodell shared a cousin bonding moment before their teams played Tuesday. (John Fisken photos)
Catch a rising star. Young guns (l to r) Emma Smith, Lauren Rose and Katrina McGranahan.
Opening nights are about far more than wins and losses.
And yes, they do keep score for a reason, and when the scoreboard clicked off Tuesday night, it wasn’t in favor of the local team, as a very, very young Coupeville squad fell 25-6, 25-6, 25-14 to a very, very seasoned South Whidbey team.
A loss is a loss, and it’s rarely pleasant to take one, but the Wolves showed heart and pluck, especially in the case of Valen Trujillo.
Immediately re-staking her claim to being the Floor Burn Queen, the junior libero spent much of the match cartwheeling from sideline to sideline, trying to track down the laser spikes flying off of the hands of Falcon hitters.
And I’m not just saying that because Trujillo led a pack of her teammates who surprised me with a post-match plate of opening night cookies.
Seriously.
Her coach, who, to my knowledge, was not bribed with chocolate chips, backs me up on this.
“Valen did a great job tonight,” said Wolf guru Breanne Smedley. “She fought for every point.”
See? Not just the cookies talking. Though they do whisper … sweetly.
But, more than wins and losses, opening night is about side things like that.
Getting reacquainted with returning stars and their families, but also seeing an influx of younger players who bring a new wave of family support with them.
It’s about meeting Kathy O’Brien, aunt to hard-hitting Wolf JV spark-plug Abby Parker, in person for the first time, and seeing Heidi Monroe, aunt of even-harder-hitting Sarah Wright, again for the first time in a long while.
Opening night is former Wolf stars like Kacie Kiel and Madeline Strasburg, now graduated but resurfacing to bestow hugs on former teammates and classmates.
It’s always a bit odd to see former players no longer clad in uniforms we have grown so accustomed to them wearing with pride, but the tradition of coming back and passing something on — a word, a hug, a smile — to the next generation of players, is what binds us in a small town like Coupeville.
The first match is about beginnings.
It’s about a boisterous freshman taking the mic and absolutely ripping through the player introductions, laying down nicknames left and right and working the crowd like a pro.
Her name is Sarah Wright and she is a ball o’ fire, and her majestic run is just beginning at CHS, on and off the court.
And, the first match is about endings, or, at least, the beginning of endings, as new seniors take those first steps down the path towards graduation.
This year’s Wolf squad only has two seniors in Sydney Autio and McKenzie Bailey, but they both had an impact on opening night.
With Autio, seeing her happy and healthy and bouncing around the court, after she spent much of her junior year limping after a season-wrecking injury, matters more than the final score.
And Bailey, who has inherited the mantle of Photo Bomb Queen from now-graduated big sis McKayla?
The only member of the Class of 2016 who played for both of last year’s league-title winning teams (basketball, tennis), she began her victory lap by expressing arched-eyebrow disapproval of my Wazzu t-shirt.
But, since she will provide me with a years-worth of awesome photos, cause she can’t resist the siren call of the camera, I’m gonna ignore that.
Also, cause Wazzu, or at least its football team, is sorta putrid at the moment.
Point, Bailey.
Opening night is about CHS football coach Brett Smedley sneaking stealthily (he thought) through the crowd to bring his wife and fellow coach flowers for her season opener, while all the parents in my row went “awwwwwwwww” in unison.
It’s about the very snazzy, yet still pretty dang butt-crushin’ bleachers installed in the CHS gym over the summer. The ’70s (and its seats) are long gone in Cow Town.
And on an Island where family lines run deep, opening night is also about the joy of cousins on rival teams getting to play each other for the first, and only time.
Wolf sophomore Hope Lodell and Falcon senior Sara Bryant faced off across the net, but before and after the match embraced each other, smiling and posing for pics — a reminder that wins and losses matter, but blood matters more.
On the court, Katrina McGranahan and Kyla Briscoe rose up for a team-up on a beautiful stuff, Tiffany Briscoe zipped a gorgeous ace on a serve that singed the net as it crawled over the tape at 102 MPH, and Trujillo?
She’s still out there, diving for loose balls, refusing to cede the night.
Ultimately, it was a loss and one in which one team was quite obviously stronger, but it was opening night and there was a lot more than just a simple match going on.
You just needed to look around for a moment and take in the whole big show for all it was.
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