Lauren Rose, smiling assassin. (John Fisken photo)
Lauren Rose is a savage.
Now, she may appear to be calm and composed, the very definition of a cool cat, an athlete who rarely betrays her emotional state as she excels in any of her three sports.
But look deep inside the chest cavity of the Coupeville High School junior and you will find a heart three times the expected size, one which grows every time she (metaphorically at least) rips off an opponents head and leaves them to bleed out.
They call her Mouse, Munchkin or Keebler Elf, but Rose played more like the Terminator Tuesday night, ripping off a run at the service stripe like I have never seen in my years of covering high school volleyball.
Spinning the ball gently from hand to hand, then dropping balls into every nook and crevice possible, she threw down 20 consecutive points on her serve to kick off the third set, propelling the Wolves to a straight-sets romp over visiting Chimacum.
The 25-16, 25-19, 25-7 romp over the Cowboys improved Coupeville to a flawless 2-0 overall, 1-0 in 1A Olympic League play.
Sitting atop the league standings (with eight more league matches to play, admittedly), the Wolves are off to a strong start in the Cory Whitmore era.
And so far they are lighting the fuse with their service game.
“Serving is our strong point; we work on it every day, twice a day,” Whitmore said. “When we’re struggling a little bit confidence-wise with our hitting, it centers us and gets us back into a nice flow.”
Rose, who put every one of her 25 serves on the night in play, recorded 10 aces, but saved the loudest fireworks for the third set.
With Coupeville comfortably ahead after holding off a Chimacum rally late in the second set, their setter stepped to the service line to kick off the third.
She almost never left.
As Rose built a 20-0 lead, she mixed in serves which skidded off Cowboy arms and out of bounds with a few (a very few) where Chimacum actually got the ball back in play.
On those, Wolf snipers Mikayla Elfrank and Katrina McGranahan made short work of any rallies.
Swinging from their heels, the duo pounded the ball off of bodies and even made linesman Craig Trujillo jump a bit as the ball ricocheted past his head several times.
Elfrank painted the corners with her lasers, while McGranahan climbed a staircase to heaven on one play, hung there for what seemed like an eternity, then uncorked and lashed the ball on a line right between two Cowboys who both swung and whiffed on the ball.
With a loud ‘n proud Julian Welling-led Wolf student section hailing Rose on every serve, she almost pulled off the near impossible and served out the entire set herself.
Alas, a CHS spike during a mini-rally caught a little too much net and flopped backward, briefly ending the magical joy ride five points short of history.
For her part Rose flashed a small smile as fans chanted her name, already digging in and ready to return serve herself.
As she did so, she briefly tugged at her jersey, rubbing the wrist on her serving hand, for a fleeting second, maybe the smallest testament to it being sore after such an epic run.
Coupeville controlled play all evening, only trailing for a brief second in the opening moments.
After back-to-back spikes misfired, the Wolves found themselves down 4-2 in the first set, but forced a side out, then flipped the ball to McGranahan and the match was effectively over on the spot.
Her run of four straight service points, two on aces, staked Coupeville to a lead it would never relinquish, and the Wolves never trailed at any point in the remaining hour of the match.
A key five-point surge late in the first, all coming off of serves by Hope Lodell and highlighted by a gorgeous winner off of Elfrank’s fist, sealed the deal and set the tone.
Coupeville blew out to an 8-1 lead in the second, again fueled by Lodell’s high-octane serving (“she’s a high risk, high reward server”), then stretched it to 23-15.
The Cowboys put together their best sustained run of the night, slicing off four straight points to momentarily make things uncomfortable, before Lodell captured back-to-back points on a nasty spike and a nastier tip that froze every Chimacum player on the floor in place.
After that it was the Lauren Rose Experience set to overdrive.
Stats-wise, the Wolves got something from everyone.
For the match, Rose dealt out six assists to go with her stellar service, while Ashley Menges set up her teammates four times.
Elfrank, who has “been working really hard,” paced the Wolves with seven kills, while McGranahan had four and Lodell added three.
Valen Trujillo (8) and Payton Aparicio (5) were the team dig-masters, with Tiffany Briscoe providing solid all-around play and Emma Smith using her height and long reach to help CHS control play at the net.
Coupeville gets an immediate chance to keep its hot streak going, with 2A Sequim coming to town Wednesday for a non-conference match.
JV and C-Team action tips at 4:15, varsity at 5:30.
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