Senior captain Scout Smith delivered 22 assists and four service aces Saturday as Coupeville volleyball mashed Chimacum, improving to 3-0 on the season. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Maddie “The Mad Masher” Vondrak rattles the gym (and the soul of every rival player) with a knee-buckling spike. (Photo by Brian Vick)
Maddie Vondrak was on fire. Maybe literally.
At one point during her torrid performance Saturday afternoon, the Coupeville High School junior stepped back after smashing another wicked spike and fanned herself.
Now, maybe it was just that the gym was a little warm on a summer-like day and she had been bouncing around like a wild woman.
Or, maybe it was that Vondrak, who introduced her fists to Chimacum, did a mic check on both of them, then unleashed holy hell on the Cowboys, was so red-hot she was burning up from the inside out.
Probably the second choice.
Either way, with Vondrak and her teammates mashin’ the ever-livin’ crud out of the ball, Coupeville strolled to a straight-sets win in its home opener, improving to a flawless 3-0 on the season.
The non-conference victory, coming on the heels of victories at Friday Harbor and Anacortes, was fast, brutal, and a lot of fun for the Wolf fans who wandered in to the gym to see a show.
It played out to a crisp ‘n tasty 25-11, 25-12, 25-5 tune, full of lightning bolts disguised as service aces, and big, booming put-aways from a Wolf unit which utterly dominated at the net.
It started early in the first set, with Zoe Trujillo and Hannah Davidson delivering winners which blistered the skin of their rivals as they zinged by, smashed into the floor, then skidded out the side door.
Trujillo’s laser tore a chunk out of a Chimacum player’s unfortunate fingers, while Davidson’s blast crushed the back-line, tearing off flecks of paint as it shot away from the Cowboy defense.
Davidson, a volleyball and basketball standout who is rumored to be considering a return to softball for her senior swan song, was on point all afternoon from the service stripe, as well.
She turned the match from a semi-close affair to the start of a romp with her first run at the line, turning a 9-7 advantage into a 15-7 lead.
One ace was as artful as it was unexpected, a high, looping serve which touched the heavens (or the gym roof, at least), then dropped between two Chimacum players, kissing the floor with a gentle, happy plop.
Not that the power show was gone for long, as Vondrak flung herself skyward to reject a Cowboy return of a Davidson serve, with the ensuing spike slamming into the floor with the sound of a melon hitting the pavement after being thrown from the top of the Empire State Building.
At which point Vondrak whirled to the side, did a little bounce, a stamp on the floor as her teammates converged on her, then another twirl back around, a death mask slipping back down her face to hide the smile she otherwise wears 99.992% of the time.
Chimacum played the remainder of the match — it was in their contract — but the Cowboys were a lot more gun-shy after that, staying safely back from the net whenever possible.
Vondrak, hunched over, arms twirling, ready to unleash hot death ‘n destruction, stared straight ahead, her unspoken thoughts fairly easy to read from the stands.
“You can run, my little Cowboys, but you can’t hide. Mamma’s coming back and she’s bringing spankings for every one of you!!”
The second set was a lot more of what folks saw in the first.
Chimacum stayed competitive for a few points, continued to show a lot of hustle, but had no way of dealing with the laser show erupting from the other side of the net.
When it wasn’t Vondrak or Davidson, it was Maya Toomey-Stout sprinting around the court, then erupting skyward to unleash her own version of scorched Earth.
Or, Chelsea Prescott gliding in from the sides, dropping the hammer of the gods.
Or, Scout Smith, in mid-air, about to drop another perfect set-up for a teammate, and then, instead, corkscrewing her body while in flight, defying the physical laws of the universe itself and flicking a lil’ winner over the net and into an impossibly-small hole in the defense.
Everyone on the floor for the Wolves chipped in with something special, with Willow Vick, Lucy Sandahl and Raven Vick coming off the bench to peg sweet serves, while Kylie Chernikoff and Lucy Tenore, the net-minders of the future, displayed their own skills at slappin’ spikes.
If the first two sets had moments when things seemed sort of balanced between the teams, the third and final frame was all Coupeville, all the time.
Smith opened the set by running off nine straight points on her serve, before Prescott came around to deliver her own nine-point assault on Chimacum.
Up 19-1 at one point, the Wolves looked for their entertainment by upping the difficulty on some plays.
Coming hot on the heels of smashes from Toomey-Stout, who hung in the air for an impossible amount of time before zinging a winner, and Vondrak, who scorched the hardwood with her kill, CHS pulled off the rally of the afternoon.
It started with Smith running full-tilt off the right side of the court for save #1, picked up momentum when Emma Mathusek flung herself across the floor for save #2, then finished with Toomey-Stout delivering the coup de grâce.
Roaring in to drive the final stake home, “The Gazelle” hit the ball so hard, if it didn’t pop, then a whole bunch of ear drums surely did.
And yet, with a match full of so much fury, the actual final point was a quiet, graceful one, with Prescott, moving like a ballet dancer, dropping an artfully-placed tip which found its resting place and refused to be returned.
Whether they used fury or grace, or some of both, the Wolf spikers filled up the stat sheet.
Vondrak finished with a team-high 10 kills, without a single error, which brought a particularly big smile to the face of Coupeville coach Cory Whitmore.
Prescott and Toomey-Stout chipped in with six kills apiece, while Mathusek (six digs), Davidson (six aces), and Vondrak (two solo blocks) topped other individual categories.
For Whitmore, the win was sweet, but the development of his players, both on and off the court, was bigger.
The Wolves hosted young volleyball players at a kids clinic earlier in the day, then ate lunch with the girls who will one day inherit their CHS uniforms.
Once on the floor, they seized momentum and pushed their advantages.
“We’re trying to develop the hitter/setter connection; we want to use a varied offense and be able to attack from multiple places and different directions,” Whitmore said. “We’re definitely making progress on that.
“It was also nice to see how the players responded to running the clinic,” he added. “It all made for a good Saturday – not a bad day at all.”
