Wolf junior Hannah Davidson had seven kills Wednesday as Coupeville High School volleyball rallied for a five-set win over Granite Falls. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
The better team won Wednesday.
It just took a lot longer to get there than we all might have expected.
Coming off an epic, emotion-packed, five-set win the night before against their arch-rivals, the Coupeville High School volleyball squad looked dazed, disorientated and out of sorts for the first two sets against visiting Granite Falls.
But the Wolves are undefeated for two reasons – they have considerable talent and they don’t give in easily.
Digging deep and avoiding a stunning upset, Coupeville rallied for a 20-25, 21-25, 25-12, 25-22, 15-9 win, sending their vocal fans home with relieved smiles on their faces, and quelling at least some of their coach’s angina.
“I’m extremely excited we turned it around,” said a still somewhat frazzled Cory Whitmore. “It is very easy to let things get away when you’re shell-shocked, but we displayed a lot of fight and heart.
“That will be very important as we go forward,” he added. “We expect a lot of ourselves, and we expect to win, and sometimes you have to find a way to do that … and we did.”
The win lifts Coupeville to 3-0 in North Sound Conference play, 5-0 overall.
The Wolves sit in a tie atop the league with defending 1A state champ King’s (3-0, 5-1), which swept South Whidbey Wednesday in straight sets.
The Knights lone loss was a four-set defeat at the hands of North Creek, a 4A Kingco school currently sitting with a flawless 7-0 record.
Sole possession of first-place in the NSC will be on the line next Tuesday, Oct. 2, when Coupeville travels to Shoreline for the first of two regular-season meetings with their private school foes. King’s comes to Whidbey Oct. 23.
Wednesday’s warm-up match became a wake-up, after Coupeville was caught sleep-walking for close to an hour.
The less said about the first two sets, the better, as very little went positively for the Wolves as they tried to adjust to a team with a unique playing style.
After facing a hard-hitting South Whidbey squad Tuesday, the Wolves ran up against a Granite Falls unit which dinked, poked, blooped and tipped the ball all night, making up for a lack of raw aggression by keeping everything in play.
CHS trailed from start to finish in the first set, and had just a (very) brief 1-0 lead in the second frame before that also got away from them.
Hannah Davidson had several nice tips for winners in the early going, but while big hitters Emma Smith, Ashley Menges and Maya Toomey-Stout were able to lash a few sizzling spikes, they were few and far between.
Something finally seemed to spark for Coupeville in the third set, as Scout Smith led off things by becoming the first Wolf to make a sustained run at the service stripe.
With Menges and Emma Smith pulling off “surprise, you thought the ball was going that way, but it really was going the other way” tips, Scout Smith reeled off six straight points to open the set.
After that, the Wolves began to drop the hammer more frequently, whacking winners off of their rivals arms, legs and torsos, erasing most of the smiles on the Granite side of the net.
Unable to blunt Coupeville’s power game, or match it, the visitors backpedaled, continued to throw junk in the air, and watched in horror as their advantage rapidly slipped away.
Zoe Trujillo popped into the game and immediately connected on a winner, Davidson continued to be a strong force up front and Toomey-Stout had the cannon fully firing by that point.
Coupeville’s service game, which had been uncharacteristically off in the early going, clicked from the third set on, as well.
Chelsea Prescott zinged a wicked ace that smacked the floor and curled around a would-be receiver, before Menges displayed some prime-time power.
One of “Smashley’s” serves exploded underneath a rival’s feet with so much fury it marred the glossy finish on the gym floor and set the Granite player’s shoelaces on fire.
The fourth set was chock full of raw power, 99.3% of it coming from Coupeville’s gunners, though the Tigers made things interesting by rallying from a 20-12 deficit to knot things up at 21-21.
Granite thought it had retaken the lead on the very next point, but celebrated prematurely, as Emma Mathusek made a stunning dig on a ball that looked unplayable.
With a flick of her wrists, the unsung Wolf junior, who does all the back row dirty work that makes the highlight reel kills possible, sent the ball curling back over the net, where it sliced through three defenders and dropped in for a monumental point.
With the bleeding stopped, Coupeville rode an ace from Toomey-Stout and a kill from Trujillo to force a fifth set and completely deflate the last bit of air out of Granite.
The visitors did briefly hold a 3-1 lead in the final frame, but a couple of sweet tips from Prescott pulled the Wolves back even, then Toomey-Stout started killin’ girls.
The longer the match went, the harder “The Gazelle” seemed to hit, and her spikes in the fifth set were of the type which ripped out souls and sent the Wolf student cheering section into hysterics.
The yells just got louder when Lucy Sandahl made a splashy cameo, launching a wicked service ace to push CHS to the edge of victory.
And the final blow?
Vintage Toomey-Stout, flying up the middle, launching airborne, hanging there for an eternity, then introducing her clenched fist to the hapless ball, blasting a match-closing spike right through the heart of the Granite defense.
It was the 15th and final kill of her night, helping her top a balanced stat sheet which included 12 kills from Emma Smith, seven from Davidson and five from Prescott.
Mathusek racked up 18 digs, Scout Smith was the motor which made the Wolves run with 35 silky assists, and Prescott paced CHS at the service line with five aces, while Menges and Emma Smith added four apiece.
JV nipped:
Missing several ill players, the Wolf young guns took the opening set 25-17, then faded, falling 25-16, 25-10.
The loss drops the JV to 1-2 in league play, 2-3 overall.
The opening set was a mix of big hits, with Maddie Vondrak, Trujillo and Willow Vick hammering away, while Vondrak used her jumping ability and long fingers to rise above the net and continually snuff out Granite shots.
Jaimee Masters put the set on ice with a strong run at the service line, and things seemed to be completely in Coupeville’s favor.
It wasn’t to be, though, as Granite completely flipped the switch after that, limiting the Wolf highlights to a couple more put-aways by Trujillo and two perfectly-lobbed running tips by Vick.
Superheroes live amongst us:
The best play of the night didn’t come in either match, but right at the tail end of warm-ups for the varsity match.
Coupeville had its HUDL camera set up right behind the court on a tripod, and someone, or something, slammed into it, knocking the camera free.
As it fell towards the unforgiving gym floor, a half-scream went up, several Wolves lurched in slow motion, and then Vondrak, looking every bit the part of a superhero, came flying past multiple teammates and snagged the equipment mere centimeters away from it kissing the floor.
And then promptly slow-strutted away, possibly whispering “I’m Batman!!” under her breath as she went.
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