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Still large and in charge

Posted in standings, tagged CHS Wolves, football, league standings, Northwest League, Soccer, volleyball on May 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Xavier Murdy charges into battle. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

The fall belongs to La Conner, the school year to Coupeville.

We’ve made it through two of three seasons during this pandemic-fractured campaign, with winter sports set to kick off Monday and finish in mid-June.

Fall sports, which were played second and not first as normal, featured a very-competitive four-way battle for supremacy, with La Conner coming out with 17 varsity wins across volleyball, football, boys soccer, and girls soccer.

Cross country doesn’t have won/loss records, and boys tennis was cancelled after Friday Harbor chose not to play any sports this season.

The 17 wins was a big bounce back for the always-tough Braves, who won exactly zero games during spring sports.

But fall is La Conner’s sweet spot, thanks to a two-time defending state champ volleyball team which went 10-0 this time around, sweeping all 30 sets it played.

Mount Vernon Christian, paced by its title-winning girls soccer squad, was second with 15 fall varsity wins, followed by Orcas Island (13, with 10 from boys soccer), and Coupeville, which collected 12.

Concrete and Darrington were far back, with just two wins apiece, while Friday Harbor took the zero, cause you can’t win if you don’t play.

When we add fall and spring together, the Wolves, who went 25-3 in the spring while playing softball, baseball, and girls tennis, go back out in front, and by a lot.

With just basketball left to play — we don’t count wrestling, because CHS doesn’t wrestle, and this blog isn’t called, say, Darrington Sports — here’s the school year to date varsity win totals:

Coupeville — 37
Orcas Island — 20
La Conner — 17
Mount Vernon Christian — 16
Friday Harbor — 11
Darrington — 10
Concrete — 2

Final fall sports standings:

Northwest League boys soccer:

School	League	Overall
Orcas Island	10-0-0	10-0-0
MV Christian	4-2-0	4-2-0
CPC-Lynnwood	4-3-1	4-3-1
La Conner	3-4-1	3-4-1
PC Christian	3-5-1	3-5-1
Coupeville	1-5-0	1-5-0
Grace Academy	0-6-1	0-6-1

Northwest League football:

School	League	Overall
La Conner	3-1	4-1
Coupeville	2-1	3-2
Darrington	1-1	2-3
Concrete	0-3	0-5

Northwest League girls soccer:

School	League	Overall
MV Christian	6-0-0	6-0-0
Coupeville	2-3-0	2-3-0
La Conner	0-5-0	0-5-0

Northwest League volleyball:

School	League	Overall
La Conner	10-0	10-0
Coupeville	6-3	6-3
MV Christian	5-4	5-4
Orcas Island	3-7	3-7
Concrete	2-8	2-8
Darrington	0-4	0-4

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Photo finish for Wolf football vets

Posted in Football, tagged Alex Jimenez, CHS Wolves, football, John Fisken photos, Senior Night on May 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Coupeville High School football managers Brenna Silveira (left) and Melanie Navarro welcome you to Senior Night. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

One final rumble.

The four seniors on the Coupeville High School football team went out winners Saturday, accounting for all the touchdowns in a 29-0 thrashing of visiting Concrete.

But, before they played their last game together on Mickey Clark Field, the quartet of Alex Jimenez, Sage Downes, Ben Smith, and Dakota Eck grabbed their moment in the photo spotlight.

The pics are courtesy John Fisken, whose work can be found here:

John’s Photos (johnsphotos.net)

Alex Jimenez and family.

Dakota Eck with brother Cameron and mom Cheridan.

Ben Smith hangs out with his parents, Deb and Sherman Smith.

Sage Downes, middle child of the three reared by Ralph and Angie Downes.

The fearsome foursome prepare for their final game together.

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Empty house, full hearts

Posted in Volleyball, tagged CHS Wolves, Maddie Vondrak, Northwest League, Orcas Island, volleyball on May 9, 2021| 1 Comment »

“I will devour your soul, sister!!” Sweet-natured Maddie Vondrak transforms into the volleyball wrecking machine known as The Mad Masher. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

“Wolves on three.”

A surreal season ended on a surreal note.

Less than 24 hours after celebrating Senior Night in front of a fairly-full gym, the Coupeville High School varsity volleyball squad closed its season Saturday by thrashing visiting Orcas Island in a mostly-empty house.

No fans were allowed to attend — to honor a request by the Vikings as positive Covid cases rise in the San Juans — though rest content in the knowledge that a handful of teenage girls can make as much noise, if not more, than any group of paying customers.

And the Wolves had plenty to hoot and holler about, as they strolled to a 25-12, 25-12, 25-14 win to finish 6-3 during this pandemic-altered season.

Coupeville, which finished second in the seven-team Northwest 2B/1B League, lost only to two-time defending state champ La Conner, and they made the Braves work as hard as anyone.

While he loses seniors Maddie Vondrak, Chelsea Prescott, Jaimee Masters, and Kylie Chernikoff, Wolf coach Cory Whitmore has a roster which features one junior and six fast-rising sophomores.

In the aftermath of Saturday’s win, as his players celebrated their success and mourned the end of their time together, Whitmore had a satisfied smile peeking out from under his face mask.

“We all have a lot of love for these seniors,” he said. “They were a great support crew for the younger players, like the seniors before them were for them.

“It’s really fun to see the impact these seniors had on our sophomores, and all they passed down.”

With all the obstacles this group of Wolves faced — a new league and classification, the loss of eight seniors, the pandemic — Whitmore was thrilled to see them accept every challenge.

“They tried new things, adapted, accepted feedback, and really were peaking by the end of the season, the right time,” he said. “I’m very proud of this team, and these seniors.”

Saturday’s match was essentially over one play into things.

Orcas served, there was a brief rally, then Prescott came sliding in, dropping the hammer of the gods, her power-packed right arm spiking a winner which split a pair of Vikings and skidded away.

Game, set, match.

Almost.

The Vikings did hang around for another hour or so, but they spent much of their time admiring the Wolf big hitters at work.

Prescott, Chernikoff, and Vondrak took turns getting wicked, spraying winners to all angles and showing their young teammates the way things are done.

Toss in strong runs at the service stripe from Alita Blouin, Maddie Georges, and Abby Mulholland, quality work in the trenches from Masters, and big plays at the net from twin titans Jill Prince and Lucy Tenore, and Orcas was doomed.

The end of the match offered up a perfect mix of the present (soon to be the past), and the future, for the Wolf volleyball program.

Up 22-13 in the third set, Coupeville collected its third to last point of the season thanks to one last, blisteringly brutal spike from the college-bound Prescott.

Stalking away in triumph, the young woman who first made varsity as a freshman celebrated with her contemporaries, then, metaphorically at least, turned over the keys to the car to the next generation.

Sophomores Gwen Gustafson and Ryanne Knoblich, who were on the court at the end, are part of that rising group of sophomore stars, with Tenore, Prince, Blouin, and Georges.

The final point, appropriately, came from one of the veterans, however.

Chernikoff, a fountain of joy over the past six years, from her days as a middle school track sensation to her current status as a volleyball killing machine, strolled to the service stripe, thunked the ball off the floor, then fired a note-perfect career capper.

Her low, sinking fireball ripped off a finger or two as it turned into set point #25 and match point #75, officially ending things.

One group moves on, another moves in, and Whitmore, with 55 wins in 4.5 seasons, rolls on, building something special.

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Gridiron giants exit with a roar

Posted in Football, tagged Ben Smith, CHS Wolves, Concrete, football, Northwest League, shutout on May 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Ben Smith rushed for two touchdowns and picked off a pair of passes Saturday as Coupeville football closed its season with a 29-0 win. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

They saved their best offensive show for the finale.

Scoring a season-high four touchdowns Saturday, while also collecting their third shutout on defense, the Coupeville High School football team blasted visiting Concrete 29-0.

The win over their Northwest 2B/1B League foe gave a great sendoff to the team’s four seniors — who scored all the TD’s — while also clinching a second-straight winning season for the Wolf gridiron program.

Finishing 3-2 in a pandemic-shortened season, this year’s CHS squad follows on the heels of the 2019 group, which went 5-4.

While back-to-back campaigns in which they won one more game than they lost doesn’t guarantee any state title banners will be hung any time soon, it is a huge step forward for a program which didn’t have a winning season between 2006-2018.

Wolf coach Marcus Carr, who has been at the helm for three seasons now, paid tribute to seniors Alex Jimenez, Sage Downes, Dakota Eck, and Ben Smith for their contributions to the rebuilding.

“Very happy with the way the guys played this season,” Carr said. “Our seniors shined tonight and they set the tone for us all year.”

Seniors (l to r) Sage Downes, Smith, Dakota Eck, and Alex Jimenez spend the final moments of their prep careers with coach Marcus Carr. (Jackie Saia photo)

That four-pack of 12th graders made an impact right from the start Saturday night.

Playing in front of their home fans for the first time in a month, they forced three-and-out sequences the first two times Concrete touched the ball.

Jimenez came crashing through the line on a fourth-and-four to drag down a ball-carrier short of the line on the opening “drive,” and the mood was set.

While Coupeville’s defense has been strong all season, its offense has taken its sweet time about scoring most games.

Not so against Concrete, as the Wolves busted off a march to the promised land midway through the first quarter.

Freshman quarterback Logan Downes hit Jimenez and Daylon Houston with quicksilver passes, wrapped around a strong run up the middle by Smith.

That loosened up the Concrete defense, and Smith promptly took advantage, bursting through a mass of would-be tacklers, then outrunning the Lions to the end zone on a 20-yard scoring tear.

While the PAT refused to be converted, it didn’t really matter as the Wolves continued to jump all over their foes.

Smith pilfered a Lions pass on the next possession, his first of two picks, which set up a unique scoring play.

Getting one year together on the high school football field, the second and third of Angie Downes three sons made it count, hooking up on a 28-yard touchdown pass.

Logan, the confident young gun, lofted a pass from right to left, the ball dropping out of the sky right onto the fingertips of moderately-old Sage, who strolled in for the score.

Somewhere, Hunter, their now very-old (relatively speaking) older brother, who still holds some Coupeville QB records, probably nodded and said to anyone in ear shot, “You realize I taught them everything about football.”

Houston knocked the extra point through the goalposts, then returned shortly thereafter to do the same again, this time after Smith bolted in for a score from nine yards out early in the second quarter.

Up 20-0 at the halftime break — that time when PA announcer Willie Smith and clock operator Joel Norris go cookie-hunting — the Wolves coasted in from there, relying on a series of big defensive plays to keep Concrete at bay.

Jimenez spent much of the night harassing anyone in a Lions uniform who dared to come close to the ball, the same as Isaiah Bittner and Josh Upchurch, while Sage Downes and Scott Hilborn picked off passes.

Smith snagged his second INT, this one on an eye-popping play where he hauled in the ball with one hand while tip-toeing down the sideline, just barely staying in play.

Tim Ursu busted off a nice run to keep the Concrete defense honest, but it was Eck who tore off a 46-yard run to the end zone in the fourth quarter for the season’s final touchdown.

Before that, Houston showed off the power of his big kicking leg, absolutely crushing a 26-yard field goal.

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Young Wolves chase success, today and tomorrow

Posted in Volleyball, tagged CHS Wolves, Grey Peabody, Orcas Island, season finale, volleyball on May 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Ryanne Knoblich spins a ball into play, while Skylar Parker backs her up. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

The future is a bright one.

The Coupeville High School JV volleyball squad, playing for first-year coach Ashley Menges, were a bold, confident, frequently-inspired squad of heavy hitters and service stripe snipers.

Exiting with a 25-9, 25-15, 15-7 rout of visiting Orcas Island Saturday, the young Wolves finished the pandemic-altered season with a crisp 6-3 record.

Coupeville’s only losses came to La Conner, the premier spiker program in the Northwest 2B/1B League, and all three matches were tough battles.

Saturday’s tilt, played with no fans, was a different affair, as the Wolves jumped on the Vikings early and rarely relented.

Maya Lucero got her team rockin’ with a spike which was nasty enough to make the Orcas players take two steps back, then reconsider and make it four steps instead.

From there, it was time for Jordyn Rogers to step into the spotlight, with her service game garnering much hooting and hollering from the Wolf varsity players — who sounded louder by themselves than a full gym might have.

Rogers ran off a string of seven straight points, stretching a 9-5 lead out to 16-5 and breaking the spirit of the visitors.

Helping her along was Olivia Schaffeld, who pasted a winner off the back line, and Maya Lucero who snuck in to drop an artful tip which froze everyone on the other side of the net.

Everyone in a Wolf uniform was on fire, with Allie Lucero blistering serves to all parts of the court and Grey Peabody patrolling the net with a vengeance.

Grey Peabody is a tower of power.

Thoroughly entertaining themselves, varsity stars Kylie Chernikoff and Maddie Vondrak worked the lines, bringing all the flare at their disposal.

Trying to outdo one another with extra-dramatic waves of their flags while signaling whether a ball was inside the lines or not, the duo kept on upping their game, until Chernikoff nearly did a cartwheel after spinning out of control on one call.

Giggling behind her mask, while Vondrak laughed along on the other side of the floor, Chernikoff and her fellow senior thoroughly enjoyed themselves during the early stage of their final day in a CHS volleyball uniform.

Back on the floor, the JV spikers continued to rain down pain on the Vikings, with Rogers and Allie Lucero combining to win 17 points on serve in the second set.

The third set gave Ryanne Knoblich a chance to test her ability to bash the ball (she passed the test, easily), while Allison Nastali, Skylar Parker, and Gwen Gustafson all excelled during their stints on the floor.

La Conner escaped this season, maybe, but Coupeville is young, scrappy, and hungry. Watch out for the pack that hunts together.