Savina Wells and her Coupeville Middle School volleyball teammates won two of three matches Monday. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
No point uncontested, no play given up on, for Lyla Stuurmans and Co.
Marathons are overrated.
Want a real endurance test? Camp out on the rock-hard Coupeville Middle School bleachers for the entire run of one afternoon of volleyball.
By the time the Wolves and visiting Granite Falls were done Monday, four-plus hours had come off the clock.
Three matches were played in full, even though in all three the third set was unnecessary to decide a winner and loser.
A million volleyballs had been bashed and then stashed away, except for the one which vanished under the stands never to be seen again until the day CMS rips out the diabolical butt-crushers and replaces them with cushy recliners.
Come on Bill Gates, fund my dream.
As the fans staggered into the night, trying to remember a time when their spines were straight and their posteriors were un-aching, the Wolf spikers were celebrating two wins in three matches.
How the afternoon played out, in the order it played out:
Level 2:
Powered by big serves and nerves of steel (at least at the end), Coupeville roared to a 25-18, 27-25 win, then fell 15-10 in a mostly-meaningless “practice” set.
Cause this is middle school volleyball, and we’ll play until dawn and you’ll like it, buddy.
With the win, the most-successful CMS squad jumps to 5-2 on the season, with three matches left on the schedule.
Monday’s full-tilt rumble started with a little bit of backfire, as the Wolves surprisingly fell behind 6-0 in the first set.
Things changed, and in a hurry, once CMS forced a side-out and got its hands on the ball.
Brionna Blouin started the rain of terror from the service stripe, firing off back-to-back aces that slammed into the floor and skidded away, leaving a trail of tears from the Granite players who swung and whiffed.
After that, Madison McMillan really got things rockin’, dropping a flurry of nasty aces while getting some crucial help from a teammate on one tense point.
With the two teams battling through a rare long rally, it looked like Granite had a point won, which would have put the Tigers up 10-8.
Instead, the Wolves danced with the devil in the pale moonlight and lived to tell about it, thanks to Skylar Parker.
With her back to the opposing team, and her body dangerously close to touching the net, she flicked a high, arcing shot over her head for one of the most-electrifying plays of the long afternoon.
The fact Parker got the ball over the net while under great duress was remarkable enough, but the fact she angled the ball perfectly, dropping it between two Granite defenders for an unexpected winner, was slightly uncanny.
In the stands, Skylar’s littlest sister, Avery, busy happily drawing pictures, looked up for half a second, nodded her approval, then went right back to coloring.
Cause, priorities.
One inspired play from a young woman just discovering her true athletic potential, and the entire match shifted.
Sparked by Parker’s shot, CMS snatched the lead on a wicked ace from McMillan, and never trailed again.
Blouin peppered Granite from the service line, stopped only by a middle school rule limiting the numbers of serves one player can launch, while Parker came back around to set up a McMillan drop-shot winner.
The second frame was more of the same joy ride, but with a few name changes.
This time around, it was Issabel Johnson tearing off a 5-0 run on her serve to kick-start things, with one ace exploding upwards off a Granite player’s face.
Allison Nastali and Jada Heaton chipped in with strong serves of their own, Kaitlyn Leavell had a fairly sensational one-handed save on a ball headed out of bounds, and Coupeville was cruising for much of the set.
Up 22-13 with Blouin on a run of four-straight service winners, the Wolves seemed unstoppable.
Until things took a dizzying detour.
Suddenly playing like world-beaters with their backs to the wall, the Tigers came roaring up from the pits of despair to throw down a 12-2 run, and actually found themselves with set point at 25-24.
But never fear, cause McMillan and Blouin have no fear, no nerves, and no quit.
Just as CMS was about to be staggered by a gut-wrenching set loss, the Wolves found a way out, thanks to Blouin running down a ball in the back-court and flinging it back over her head.
The ball landed exactly where it needed to be, on McMillan’s fingertips, and she delivered with a second over-the-shoulder shot, this one launching the ball over the heads of the Granite players and to the safety of the far corner for a gut-check winner.
Given a reprieve, the Wolves put the hammer down hard, with Heaton closing the set, and securing the win, with back-to-back service winners to the delight of her teammates, both those on the floor and those rocking the stands.
As noted before, the idea of playing a third set when you’ve already won the match is questionable in many eyes.
That being said, if they hadn’t contested a final frame, we would have missed out on seeing Aby Wood and Laila Wenzel get more floor time, plus a really beautiful drop shot winner hit by a sliding Ava Mitten.
That alone made the extra chunk of time worth it.
Level 3:
The only match Coupeville lost, but it was close, as the Wolves fell 25-21, 25-16, 15-13.
With the loss, the third squad fell to 1-6 on the season.
Even in defeat, the Wolves showed great potential, especially at the service stripe, with Oktober Frost, Bailey Thule, Maryah Love, and Hayley Thomas all firing up solid offerings.
Thomas, in particular, was a wild woman, lashing one serve off of an unlucky Granite player’s chin, then whacking a side-arm ace which tore out a divot in the floor.
There weren’t a ton of sustained rallies in this match, but Jones Walther and Frost came up big with drop shot winners which hit and curled away from their rivals.
The final set featured nine ties, a strong overhead winner at the net delivered by Kaylee Clark, and quality work from Kassidy Upchurch, Bryley Gilbert and Gabriella Becktell.
Level 1:
Coupeville’s aces, who had come close but not broken through, finally found the winning combination, bashing Granite 25-13, 25-21 to claim their first win of the season.
While a third practice set went 18-16 to the visitors, it was a brawl, with both teams having two set points apiece.
Big hits from Katie Marti (a put-away at the net while airborne) and Taylor Brotemarkle (an artful drop shot) earned raves, while Chloe Marzocca smoked an ace which caught even her by surprise.
The ball exploded off of her fingertips and seemed headed for the back wall, only to dive and catch the last inch of the court for a winner.
Marzocca, assuming her serve was long, tried to roll the ball back to Granite when they returned it to her, only to discover that nope, she really was that good.
Cue a big smile, a little shrug of the shoulders, then another smokin’ hot serve headed across the net.
The first two sets, otherwise known as the ones which count, featured Coupeville at its best.
Olivia Schaffeld went on a run at the service line which included an ace so berserk it not only hit a Granite player in the face, but made the Tiger take a stumbled step backwards and awkwardly fall down.
While she might not have done as much dental damage, Schaffeld’s teammate, Mia Farris, had the longest run at the line in any of the three matches.
By the time she was done with an eight-point explosion, Farris had taken a modest 8-4 lead and turned it into a 16-4 romp in favor of the Wolves.
She got some help from Savina Wells, who missed the first meeting between these schools.
Back in the lineup Monday, the tall, graceful tower of power controlled play at the net a great deal of the time, bounding into the atmosphere, then driving home winners like she was planting spikes in the railroad.
Wells also pulled off a save in which she came hurtling from the back-court, dropped to her knees and slid half the length of the court, before popping up under the ball as it descended, then flicking it back over the net.
Toss in some nice tip winners from Grey Peabody, and solid all-around play from Lyla Stuurmans, and the Wolves were firing on all cylinders.
The best play of the match was actually a series of plays, all wrapped into one point which tasted sweeter when CMS won a back-and-forth battle.
It started with Brotemarkle, maybe not the tallest Wolf, playing like a giant, keeping a rally alive by rising up at the net to crunch the ball (and mash her fingers, as the ensuing wince and nose wrinkle revealed).
Granite sent the ball back, but Schaffeld lunged to the side and used a one-handed poke to prolong things, setting up Stuurmans at the net for an emphatic winner.
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