Alita Blouin (middle) and Maddie Georges led the Coupeville Middle School 8th grade varsity volleyball squad to a season-ending win Thursday. (Suzan Georges photos)
One last afternoon on the court (until next season).
Hayley Fiedler (left) and Gwen Gustafson, part of the bright future of Wolf female athletics. (Irene Gustafson photo)
Coupeville Middle School volleyball has left the building.
After waging war with visiting Granite Falls for four-plus hours Thursday, it’s time for the CMS spikers to call it a wrap.
The Wolves closed their season in style, getting big plays, considerable fan support and a three-set thriller of a win from the 8th grade varsity squad.
The action as it played out in front of fans camped on the hardest bleachers known to humanity:
8th grade varsity:
The first time these teams met, it was in a Granite Falls gym where the temperature cracked 80 degrees.
A lot less sluggish this time around, the Wolves dominated early and late, capturing a 25-12, 19-25, 25-23 win.
In the opening 10 minutes, the match looked as one-sided as is humanly possible.
Coupeville, behind scorching serves from Allie Lucero and Lucy Tenore, tore out to a huge lead.
After Gwen Gustafson dropped a winner during a rally set off by a sizzlin’ Taygin Jump serve, the Wolves were up 17-5 and Granite looked like a team counting down the minutes until its season ended.
The Tigers eventually woke up, and rallied a bit, but all that did was light a fire under Alita Blouin.
“The Assassin,” who is going to be a very special athlete — actually she already is — is the rare Coupeville athlete who approaches every play with the intensity of a bone-cracking hit man (or hit woman).
Off the court, Blouin has smiles for everyone, but on the floor, she seems to want to watch people (metaphorically) bleed out … and it’s beautiful to watch.
Coming hot on the heels of a sweet tip winner from running mate Maddie “Mad Dog” Georges (also a pretty solid hit woman in her own right), Blouin unleashed a service ace that redefined the word nasty.
The serve abused the Granite receiver, leaving scorch marks along both arms and forever scarring her psyche.
Just to drive the point home, Blouin’s next serve skipped off a Tiger’s arm, knocked her glasses askew, then bounded away as the Wolf ace stared down Granite’s team, not a flicker of emotion on her steely game face.
When she wasn’t serving hot death, “The Assassin” was skidding across the floor, filling up the highlight reel.
On one play, Blouin slid five feet on her knees to save a ball, then promptly popped up, hustling back into place to deliver a winner on the third CMS hit on the rally.
Granite was much more effective in the second set, but the Wolves made things difficult for them.
Vivian Farris delivered a nice run on serve, Gustafson got a return to crawl up and over the net, hanging at the top for an eternity before splashing down for a point, and Georges laid out on the floor, punching a winner while sprawled.
With high school players and coaches in attendance during a break from practice next door, Tenore cracked back-to-back slicing winners, Trinity McGee rampaged from one side of the court to the other chasing down runaway balls, and the Wolves pulled off an unexpected bang-bang play.
On that one, Hayley Fiedler smashed her return of a Granite serve, but flipped her body just a hair and sent the ball right into Blouin’s face.
Reacting without thinking, Blouin jabbed her hand and somehow caught the ball a millisecond before it connected with her noggin, spinning the ball back towards Fiedler.
As both teams watched, jaws on the floor, Fiedler completed the stunning play, sending Blouin’s accidental pass back over the net, where it dropped to the floor for the most unexpected of winners.
Even with that stunner to their credit, the Wolves couldn’t ice the match in the second set, but they were more than up to the task in the final frame.
The battlin’ Lucero twins, Maya and Allie, led the charge down the stretch, mixing up booming serves with a graceful tip winner or two, while Ryanne Knoblich crushed a spike which caught the net, flipped straight upwards, then dropped in for a point.
8th grade JV:
Despite strong play from Jordyn Rogers, Cypress Socha, Jill Prince, Katie Buskala and Melanie Navarro, the Wolves fell 25-11, 25-16.
After a run of back-and-forth play in the early going, with Buskala ripping off three straight aces for CMS, Granite began to steadily pull away.
The first set had four ties, and Coupeville was up by a point twice, but once the Tigers grabbed the lead at 9-8, they never gave it back.
The second set looked like another runaway, as Granite bolted out to a 6-1 lead, but the Wolves had a few tricks up their sleeve.
After forcing a side-out, Coupeville gave the ball to Navarro and she kick-started things in the opposite direction with a run of three straight points on her serve.
One rotation later, it was Prince’s turn to fire up the ace machine at the service line, then Socha slammed a winner off of a Granite player’s toe and suddenly the Wolves had turned a five-point deficit into a 12-10 lead.
The visitors had their own high-powered servers, however, and used three long runs at the line to close the set on a match-deciding 15-4 run.
7th grade JV:
After being bounced 25-16 in the opening set, Coupeville came within a point of taking the second frame and earning a split in the match.
Unfortunately for the Wolves, the Tigers had a mighty mite armed with a very-effective, and surprisingly-powerful, underhanded serve, and she ran off the final five points as Granite rebounded to edge CMS 26-24.
Coupeville got strong play from Sofia Peters, who snapped off an ace that dropped suddenly and skidded away, before returning to notch a point on a play where she punched the ball between defenders while on a full run.
Mercedes Kalwies-Anderson and Lauren Marrs keyed Coupeville’s run in the second set, both ripping off five straight points on their serve – the maximum allowed in middle school volleyball — as the Wolves built a 15-7 lead.
Marrs put some extra mustard on her winners, bashing an ace which skipped off of a Granite player’s forehead, then operating as a one-woman wrecking crew.
After sending a low, slicing serve into play on her third attempt, Marrs eventually closed out the point by going airborne and crunching a spike which launched from her own back-court and splashed down behind the defense just inches away from the line.
The next five CMS servers failed to garner a single point on their serve, however.
That blunted Coupeville’s surge, despite a great hustle play on which Brenna Silveira ran down a ball and popped it skyward, giving Kalwies-Anderson a prime opportunity to smash the put-away.
It wasn’t until Marrs once again rotated back behind the service line that the Wolves reclaimed their mojo, as she deposited yet another ace in a spot where Granite had no hope of returning the ball.
But, up 24-20, Coupeville’s luck ran out under a hail of high-arcing rainbow serves from the smallest, but deadliest, girl on the floor.
7th grade varsity:
Granite made it three wins in four matches with a 25-18, 25-12, 15-8 victory, playing with a quick, decisive style as the clock skipped past 7 PM.
Marrs continued to be one of the true stars of the season finale, bashing one bullet-like winner with the heel of her hand, before dropping another point on a well-placed lob.
Desi Ramirez and Jesse Ross-McMahon cracked off service winners, while Ava Mitten, Skylar Parker, Lily Meyers, Kaitlyn Leavell, Grey Peabody, Karyme Castro and Hayley Thomas all chipped in with hustle, fighting for every point.
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