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Posts Tagged ‘Kyla Briscoe’

Embrace the dark art of the dribble!!

Posted in Girls Basketball, tagged , , , , , on November 21, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Tia Wurzrainer leads a charge up-court. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

   Nicole Lester pounds the wall on the hardwood, while daydreaming about droppin’ elbows on rival player’s heads.

Mollie Bailey brings the shake, and the bake, to her dribbling.

Eyes scanning the court, Kyla Briscoe looks for an open teammate.

Maddy Hilkey’s dribbling style? Smooth, like butter.

   Genna Wright heads off on a dribbling drill, while Kalia Littlejohn prays this won’t be a five-hour practice.

Scout Smith, breakin’ ankles every day.

Chelsea Prescott gets a 1-on-1 lesson from CHS coach David King.

It all starts with a dribble.

Basketball success is predicated on many factors, but owning strong ball-handling skills is pretty high on the list.

As three-time defending Olympic League champs, the Coupeville High School girls squad knows that and embraces it.

Working under the guidance of longtime hoops gurus David and Amy King, the Wolves worked on building their game from the ground floor up during the early days of practice.

Wandering through the gym was mad clicker John Fisken, who delivers unto us the pics seen above.

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A final (home) spike!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , on October 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   How many kills will you have tonight, Katrina McGranahan? “I don’t know … is “a lot” a number?” (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

Payton Aparicio and the parental units kick off our Senior Night portraits.

Team manager Kayla (left) and Lauren Rose

Allison Wenzel

Mikayla Elfrank

Hope Lodell hung in midair for a good two minutes. Uncanny.

Kyla Briscoe

McGranahan

Lodell

   Juniors Ashley Menges (holding cutout) and Emma Smith (pointing at Aparicio) get in on the festivities.

The end comes for everyone.

There’s still a ton of volleyball to play — a road match at Port Townsend Saturday and then a postseason run starting at districts Nov. 4 in Tacoma — but Wednesday night was the final home court appearance for the Magnificent Seven (plus one).

Coupeville’s incredibly deep senior class, comprised of seven spikers and one faithful manager, were honored after the Wolves routed Klahowya and John Fisken was there to capture it on film.

The photos above are courtesy him.

To see everything he shot, on and off the court, pop over to the link below.

When you do, remember, purchases help fund college scholarships for CHS student/athletes, while also enticing Fisken to come back to Cow Town more often.

http://www.johnsphotos.net/Sports/2017-Coupeville-Volleyball/2017-10-25-vs-Klahowya/

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Bumps, spikes and (camera) clicks!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , on October 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Hope “The Surgeon” Lodell charges off the bench, ready to carve up some fools. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

   Local photo whiz kid John Fisken honors his late mom and sister on Dig for the Cure night by letting Wolf spikers turn his silver locks pink.

Zoe Trujillo unleashes The Crippler.

Wolf starters, ready to unleash total freakin’ destruction.

No volleyball shall escape Jaimee Masters.

   Healthy again after losing a season to injury, Kyla Briscoe is quite happily putting up big numbers on the stat sheet.

Katrina McGranahan sparks the offense with a picture-perfect bump.

   You can’t return Lucy Sandahl’s serves. You can try, maybe, but just know you’ve already lost.

The gym was alive with sound Thursday night.

The sound of Coupeville High School spikers pounding on another hapless foe, sweeping to straight-sets wins in both varsity and JV action.

The sound of silence, as those gathered paused to reflect on the fight against breast cancer.

And the sound of a camera clicking away.

The shutterbug was John Fisken, and the photos above are courtesy him.

To see everything he shot, pop over to the link below.

When you do, remember that purchases help fund college scholarships for CHS student/athletes, while also encouraging Fisken to return to Cow Town.

http://www.johnsphotos.net/Sports/2017-Coupeville-Volleyball/2017-10-19-vs-Pt-Townsend/

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Picking up steam!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , , on October 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Former Coupeville JV volleyball coach Kristin Bridges (and son) popped in Thursday to watch the Wolves romp to a win. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

   Wolves (l to r) Maya Toomey-Stout, Emma Smith and Ashley Menges are part of a big-hitting, sweet-serving first-place team.

One win away.

After strolling past visiting Port Townsend in straight sets Thursday, the Coupeville High School volleyball program is super close to doing something it’s never accomplished in its long history — win back-to-back league titles.

Claim victory in just one of their final three conference matches next week, and the Wolves officially clinch the 2017 Olympic League crown, which will sit quite nicely next to the 2016 version.

Of course, Coupeville would prefer to sweep its final three tilts, then roar through districts with an eye on advancing to state for the first time since 2004.

And nothing we’ve seen so far would indicate any reason that can’t happen.

Thursday the Wolves improved to 6-0 in league play, 9-2 overall, using a 25-10, 25-15, 25-16 romp over the RedHawks to open a two-game lead in the standings.

Klahowya (4-2, 5-6) is solidly in second-place while Chimacum (1-5, 1-8) and Port Townsend (1-5, 3-10) are deadlocked for the league’s third and final playoff berth.

But there is little doubt who the hard-hitting, sweet-serving big dog is right now, as the Wolves continue to fire on all cylinders.

Not only has Coupeville won every league match this season, it hasn’t dropped a set, singing its rivals to a merry 18-0 tune. Overall, the Wolves have won 27 of 33 sets.

Facing a tall, and fairly feisty, RedHawk squad, CHS seized the momentum early and never gave it back.

The opening set stayed close, for a bit, with the Wolves clinging to an 8-7 lead and looking for that spark that would light the fire.

It arrived courtesy two players, one a newcomer to the varsity, another a seasoned pro.

Scout Smith, a smooth-hitting sophomore with deceptive power, scrambled and made a brilliant running save on a ball, poking it skyward a moment before the floor claimed it.

Given new life, Coupeville rallied to win the point on a booming spike off of the fingertips of senior Kyla Briscoe.

A key contributor since way back when she was just a raw freshman, Briscoe missed her entire junior season due to a terrible leg injury.

Instead of sulking, she became her team’s biggest cheerleader during their stellar run last year. Now, Briscoe has returned, the skip back in her step, to seize a sizable, and well-deserved chunk of the spotlight.

After pounding the crud out of the ball Thursday, she immediately went on her best service run of the season, spraying winners left, right, and every which way.

By the time she was done — stopped only by an over-eager ref who dinged her for violating a five-second rule on getting your serve in the air which few knew even existed — Briscoe had piled up 10 straight points on her serve.

From 9-7 to 19-7 in the snap of two fingers, and the RedHawks were done, emotionally, mentally and physically.

And, while Briscoe’s serves were crackin’ off elbows and fingers and slammin’ into the hardwood, she got plenty of aid from her hyped-up teammates.

Emma Smith unleashed a spike which peeled paint off the back-line (while scarring the psyche of the RedHawk who tried to stop it), and that was just one point on a non-stop aerial assault.

Payton Aparicio sliced a buzz-saw of a winner cross-court, while Scout Smith owned every inch of the floor.

One moment, she was dancing forward, using just her fingertips to spin a winner in between Port Townsend defenders.

The next, Scoutosaurus Rex scaled a stairway to heaven, then unleashed holy heck with a put-away which went from right to left, hitting the court like a grenade and spraying shrapnel in every direction as the ball skidded into the fifth row of seats.

All of that was the opening act for Mikayla Elfrank, who capped the first set with a spike which erupted from her fist with a sonic boom and left a crater where it landed just inside the end-line.

Port Townsend managed to keep some rallies going, but had little answer for Coupeville’s raw power, either from the service line or on the finishing kills.

Long service runs from Ashley Menges, Katrina McGranahan, Aparicio and (her again!) Briscoe kept the Redhawks back on their toes, while Elfrank’s burning desire to break some faces with each kill kept them wide awake.

In between their rain of terror, the Wolves mixed things up with some subtle, elegant winners, as well.

Emma Smith dropped in tips for winners on back-to-back plays, freezing the Port Townsend defense in place, while Menges continues to be the master of the fake-out.

The Wolf play-maker has perfected a play on which she makes everyone, including often times her own teammates, think she’s about to loft a set. Then, at the very last second, her fingers curve to the side, instead, sending the ball skidding over the net on a tip.

It’s a subtle thriller and an ice-cold killer, and it leaves its victims grasping at air, as the ball, which has arrived by surprise, plops neatly to the floor for another Coupeville point.

Seeing his team mesh together so well, with everyone stepping up at a different moment, puts a smile on Wolf coach Cory Whitmore’s face.

“I like to see a nice balance, and that’s what we’re getting,” he said. “We’ve been stressing communication and everyone doing their own little job at the right time.”

The Wolves filled up the stat sheet, with Briscoe dropping five service aces, pounding four kills and going low for five digs.

Aparicio and Scout Smith led CHS with six kills apiece, while Elfrank and Emma Smith each added five.

Whitmore was thrilled to see balance from his front-line players, while also giving a special nod of approval to Emma Smith.

Since she patrols the middle, the junior standout doesn’t get as many kill chances as the snipers playing on either side, but she worked with what came her way.

“Emma really took advantage of her opportunities,” Whitmore said. “That is awesome!”

Coupeville’s setters doled out 21 assists, with Lauren Rose lofting 13 and Menges eight, while senior libero Hope Lodell paced the squad with 12 digs.

McGranahan (4), Aparicio (4) and Rose (3) joined Briscoe as Wolves racking up service aces.

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“That was exciting to see!!”

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , on October 10, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Wolf senior Kyla Briscoe pounded a season-high 12 kills Tuesday against Sequim. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

As losses go, this one doesn’t sting too badly.

The Coupeville High School volleyball squad went toe-to-toe, and kill-to-kill, with an aggressive, big-hitting squad from 2A Sequim Tuesday, and essentially played them to a standstill.

While the 1A Wolves came up on the short end of the count in a 25-22, 17-25, 26-24, 25-21 non-conference tilt, if you take out the sets format, the final score was a razor-thin 93-92.

Coupeville drops to 7-2 on the season, but gets a huge jolt of confidence heading into the stretch run.

Sitting at 4-0 in Olympic League play, the Wolves, who are gunning for a second-straight conference crown, kick off their final five regular-season matches Oct. 17 with a trip to Klahowya.

The lessons learned under fire Tuesday will be a huge bonus going forward.

“We played pretty darn well,” said CHS coach Cory Whitmore. “When you play as cleanly as we did, you can leave the court proud.”

The Wolves are working on finding a solid mix between knowing when “to be risky and when to be smart,” and their coach liked what he saw against a Sequim team which made very few errors and constantly pushed the attack.

“We worked together to find the openings and take advantage when they were there,” Whitmore said. “We rode the peaks and valleys and showed a lot of maturity, which you hope for with a team which has so many seniors.”

One of those veterans, Kyla Briscoe, was a particular standout, flying in from the outside to pound away for a season-high 12 kills and a super-high hitting percentage, especially with how many chances she had during a long, conflict-heavy match.

“I’m really, really proud of how Kyla played,” Whitmore said. “That was exciting to see.”

The spiker guru was thrilled with how his big hitters continued to attack, while also weathering the assault waged by Sequim’s sturdy snipers.

Emma Smith, Katrina McGranahan and Payton Aparicio collected five kills apiece, while Mikayla Elfrank chipped in with four, each one of which tore up a chunk of the floor.

Coupeville showed little fear, attacking from the first point until the last in a match filled with long, intense rallies.

While there were service aces, far more often points raged on, with both sides digging deep for unexpected saves on balls which looked like sure winners.

With so many big plays, it might be hard to pick just two as the defining moments, but, call me foolhardy, cause that’s just what I’m about to do.

For Sequim, it was a double-whammy, winning a point as Coupeville prematurely celebrated.

Thinking a point was over (the ref had already started to signal it so), the Wolves converged for a group yell, only to be thrown for a loop as the ball suddenly plopped over the net behind their backs.

Against all odds, and defying the laws of nature, a visiting spiker had somehow scraped the ball off the floor at the last second, flicking it skywards, where it awkwardly rattled off various body parts of two teammates and crawled, by the smallest of margins, up and over the tape.

Six sets of cheeks turned red, but the Wolves rebounded, and, in between a hail of knee-shredding kills, setter Ashley Menges had the sneakiest winner of the year.

Deep in the fourth set, she went to launch a set, and did it so convincingly every player on the court, including the CHS hitter expecting to blast the ball, bought the fake.

Instead, at the very last millisecond, betrayed only by a slight sideways shift of her eyes, Menges, hanging in mid-air, flicked her fingers downward and not upward, shooting a tip over the net.

The next sound you heard was the collective brains of 11 other players melting, as the ball softly landed in a small opening and skipped away for a winner.

And then Menges strolled away like a stone-cold killer, epic grin in place as everyone, including her own teammates, tried to collect their jaws off the ground.

If she had whipped out a mustache and twirled it while unleashing a super-villain-taking-over-the-world laugh, no one could have faulted her.

Whitmore and assistant coaches Chris Smith and Ashley Herndon, for their part, came unglued, as all three came dangerously close to storming the court and carrying Menges off on their shoulders.

Coupeville put together a fairly substantial highlight reel on the evening, with Elfrank and McGranahan peppering the back-line with their sizzlin’ put-aways and Hope Lodell and Aparicio digging kill shot after kill shot off the floor.

Emma Smith, the elegant assassin whose on-court work invokes memories of her aunt, former all-world Wolf spiker Joli Smith, was everywhere and nowhere at once.

She painted with all the colors, using her long reach to snuff a spike, dropping a floater between rival players, then bashing a ball that tore chunks of paint off the end-line.

Rising star Scout Smith might give up several inches to Emma Smith, but she’s quickly rising to meet the big-play challenge set by her older teammate.

The Slammin’ Smiths combined for three of Coupeville’s seven blocks on the night, while Scout went airborne for a winner on a running tip that was so pretty mom Charlotte will gnash her teeth when she finds out she missed seeing it live.

With her teammates attacking from all sides, set up by a ton of assists from Lauren Rose (18) and Menges (13), Briscoe was set free to be the final word and she delivered.

Lashing frozen ropes, she launched three straight winners at one point late in the match, setting off the Wolf student section, which serenaded her with a continuous howl.

For their part, the rival Sequim players just shook their heads, took several steps back and prayed Briscoe wouldn’t hurt them too badly.

There were no guarantees.

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