Freshman Lucy Tenore had several big plays at the net Saturday as Coupeville High School volleyball opened district play. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
Lucy Sandahl is one of eight Wolf seniors chasing a final run at spiker glory.
Saturday was a day of spikes, surprises and split decisions.
But mostly, it was a day of surviving.
Getting stronger as the afternoon unfolded, the Coupeville High School volleyball squad rebounded from a morning loss to Nooksack Valley and knocked arch-rival South Whidbey out of the district playoffs.
With the split — a 25-7, 25-15, 26-24 loss to the Pioneers followed by a 25-13, 25-16, 29-27 win over the Falcons — the Wolves advance to day two of districts, a win away from making it to bi-districts.
At 14-3, the current spikers tie the 2004 Wolf squad for the best single-season record in program history, and now get two shots on their home floor Tuesday to take sole possession of the record.
Coupeville plays Meridian at 5 PM, while Nooksack faces off with surprise qualifier Sultan (the Turks shocked Cedar Park Christian Saturday) at the same time.
One contest will be in the CHS gym, the other across the hall in the CMS gym.
The winners play at 6:30 in the 3rd/4th place contest, while the losers vie in the 5th/6th place showdown.
King’s and Lynden Christian, which both went 2-0 Saturday, square off in the district title match at 8 PM.
The top five finishers advance to bi-districts, which pit District 1 (North Sound Conference and Northwest Conference) against District 2 (Emerald City League).
That tourney has matches Nov. 7 and 9, with five berths to the state tourney at stake.
The brackets:
Districts:
http://www.nscathletics.com/tournament.php?tournament_id=3120&sport=10
Bi-Districts:
http://www.nscathletics.com/tournament.php?tournament_id=3129&sport=10
Saturday’s action was all about cutting eight teams down to six, and the Wolves spent the day camped out in Lynden Christian’s cramped middle school gym.
Nooksack Valley:
Something was terribly off at the start of this one, as a combination of nerves, an unfamiliar gym, the aftereffects of a bus ride, insufficient calories ingested pre-match, or the knowledge clocks would be turned back soon conspired to derail the Wolves.
The less said about the first set, the better, as nothing remotely worked for Coupeville.
A team which thrives on its service game didn’t score a point off a serve until it already trailed 24-6 and a sense of shell-shock pervaded the gym.
But then things steadily got better.
Chelsea Prescott, playing for the first time in nearly a month after working her way back from a terrible leg injury, gave the Wolves their first lead of the day at 2-1 in the second set.
While CHS ultimately couldn’t hold on to the early advantage, it did start to get much more consistent play.
Scout Smith and Hannah Davidson combined on a resounding block, Zoe Trujillo painted the back line with a winner, and Maddie Vondrak and Maya Toomey-Stout tip-toed through the air to deliver pretty lil’ tip winners.
Buoyed by a return to more of a normal state, the Wolves pushed the Pioneers hard in the final set.
Jumping out to a 7-1 lead on quality serving from Smith and Prescott, Coupeville held strong when Nooksack made a push to get back to 10-10.
A rolling roundhouse of a kill from Davidson was huge, while Smith peppered an ace off the very last bit of paint on the back line to force the final tie of the match, at 15-15.
While Nooksack started to slowly pull away, it couldn’t get the lead over one or two points until a late surge staked the Pioneers to a 24-20 lead.
Staring down an all-but-certain loss, the Wolves rose to the occasion, thrilling their coaching staff, and the large collection of CHS fans who traveled up towards Canada on a cool, but sunny weekend day.
Holding off four straight match points, Coupeville refused to break.
Zoe Trujillo delivered back-to-back big kills (the second set up by a sensational running save from Lucy Sandahl), Vondrak mashed the air out of the ball on another put-away, then Smith zipped another ace off the back line.
The Pioneers proved to be too powerful, but, even on the final point of the match, Wolf senior Emma Mathusek sold out, hitting the floor with a thunk while scraping the ball off the floor to give her team one final moment of life.
South Whidbey:
Having gone from awful to inspired across the three sets of the opening loss, Coupeville carried the momentum into their third match-up this season with their next door neighbors.
This one largely played out like the regular season bouts between the squads, with a game, but young, Falcon squad willing to scrap, but unable to slow down a veteran Wolf unit.
Raven Vick and Sandahl went on torrid runs at the service stripe in the opening set, punctuated by Toomey-Stout ripping off her jersey to reveal the Superman costume underneath.
Operating in full “Maya: Destroyer of Worlds” mode, she left scorch marks on the ball, her kills so explosive they scarred the psyches of not only the Falcon defenders, but also those of their yet-to-be-born children.
In the midst of the senior sensation being … sensational … Wolf freshman Lucy Tenore delivered some big-time moments as well, stuffing shots and slamming home winners.
After polishing off the first set in fairly short order, Coupeville kept revving the gas pedal in frame two, this time with Toomey-Stout unleashing aces from the service line.
The most-powerful of her cannon shots was an ace which literally bounced off a Falcon face, and the rout was on.
But give the scrappy Falcons credit, because they never quit and played quite well during a third set which turned out to be its own mini-classic.
The teams traded leads, big-time kills, and incredible hustle plays, but saved the best for the end.
Trailing 24-21 after a Toomey-Stout put-away, South Whidbey rallied to not only hold off three straight match points, but rebounded to claim the lead not once, not twice, but three times.
Proving just as resilient under pressure, Coupeville also refused to take a knee, holding off three set points as the Falcons tried to push things to a fourth set.
With both teams on edge, and both fan bases waging a war to see who could chew off their collective fingernails first, the match was decided by a player many thought we wouldn’t see Saturday afternoon.
Prescott, a three-sport star who combines silky smoothness with often startling power, took a nasty fall during Coupeville’s match with King’s in early October, and ended up with a ginormous knot on her ankle.
To the surprise of no one, she immediately began to work to return.
To the surprise of many, she overcame the reality of leg injuries, and actually made it back just in time for the postseason.
While she didn’t play all six positions Saturday, as CHS coach Cory Whitmore gently worked her back into the lineup, Prescott’s presence provided an emotional surge for the Wolves, and gave them back one of their most-dangerous weapons.
Stepping to the line with the score knotted at 27-27, the Wolf junior ended the match with a wham-bam-let’s-head-for-the-bus-and-then-Panda-Express combo.
Her first serve was returned into the net, her second was returned right onto the madly-swinging arm of Toomey-Stout, who hopped through the gym roof as she lashed a set, and match, ending kill.
South Whidbey is a quality team, with promising young stars in six-foot freshmen Morgan Batchelor and Isabelle Wood. The Falcons will be back, and they will be dangerous.
But this is the final ride for Coupeville’s eight splendid seniors — Sandahl, Smith, Toomey-Stout, Mathusek, Raven and Willow Vick, Trujillo, and Davidson — and they aren’t done just yet.
On to Tuesday, on to play one more time in their own gym, on to write another chapter in their best-selling tale.
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