Jaimee Masters was electric at the service line Thursday, sparking the Coupeville JV volleyball squad to a comeback win. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Give your foes a glimmer of hope, then crush their dreams.
Using every player on the roster Thursday, the Coupeville High School JV volleyball squad stormed back from down a set to blitz visiting Cedar Park Christian, turning a tense match into a runaway win.
While the Eagles slipped away with the opening set 26-24, after blowing a seven-point lead and wasting two set points, it was all Wolves, all day, as soon as the squads switched sides of the floor.
Coupeville blistered the visitors 25-16 in the second set, then took the third set, and the win, with a 25-19 frame in which the Wolf freshmen carried the load.
The win, the team’s third-straight, lifts the JV to 3-3 in North Sound Conference play, 5-4 overall.
CHS coach Chris Smith mixed up his lineup a bit more than normal Thursday, used all 13 of his players, and got big-time plays from everyone on the court.
While the Wolves ultimately dropped the opening set, they displayed an admirable scrappiness, battling back from an 11-4 deficit to knot the set up at 19-19, 22-22 and 24-24.
After failing to win a point through its first four servers, Coupeville finally broke through on the wicked hot arm of Willow Vick.
Her first serve set up a roundhouse spike from Zoe Trujillo, then Vick ripped off a knee-buckling ace to start the comeback.
The Wolves fought all the way back to tie the set at 19 when Lucy Sandahl spun a ball off of her fingertips while on the move, dropping a tip winner between two flailing rivals.
From there, the opening set became a war of attrition.
Maddie Vondrak bounded to the ceiling to pound home a winner, Raven Vick scorched a nasty ace, but a truly awful call by the ref swung things back to CPC, which closed out the set.
From their demeanor, it was tough to tell the Wolves were down a set, however, as they bounced around, full of energy and ready to bring the pain.
Sandahl started things off with a nice run at the service line, then Jaimee Masters took things to another level, ripping off seven straight winners, punctuated by a low, screaming ace which tore a chunk out of a CPC player’s toe.
Inspired by her teammate’s serving prowess, Vondrak got funky, dancing this way and that, blocking two shots in a row with just the top of her fingertips, before swinging the hammer on a spike that sealed the deal.
Riding the wave of emotion, Coupeville’s freshmen (Izzy Wells, Noelle Daigneault, Eryn Wood, Abby Mulholland, Kylie Van Velkinburgh and Anya Leavell) teamed with sophomores Ivy Leedy and Abby Meyers to do most of the damage down the stretch.
Wells opened the final set with eight consecutive points on serve, then, after a nifty kill from the middle of the floor by Leavell, it was time for Daigneault to get down and dirty.
Back-to-back aces from the freshman Homecoming princess blew the lead out to 11-1, with the Wolves eventually stretching the margin all the way to 22-9.
Van Velkinburgh sprawled out on the floor to keep one crucial rally going, while Mulholland froze two rivals with a tip winner, and things looked to be about three seconds from ending.
Give CPC some credit, though, as they closed on a 10-2 run with at least two winners catching the last flake of paint on the back line.
Smith never panicked, however, and neither did his youngest players, as he left them on the floor to close out the win. Which they promptly did.
