Scout Smith soars for a ball Thursday night. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
The Wolf spikers are 7-2 on the season, tied for second-place in the North Sound Conference.
Chelsea Prescott (left) and Emma Smith rise up and deny.
You can find the measure of a team in how it responds when it’s at its lowest moment.
With that in mind, the next few days will tell us a lot about the 2018 Coupeville High School volleyball squad.
Coming in to Thursday’s home match with Cedar Park Christian, the Wolves were flying high, their only loss coming at the hands of King’s, the defending 1A state champs.
Blessed with big hitters, strong servers and a nimble setter in Scout Smith, CHS had the markings of a team which seemed primed to make a run at a second-straight trip to the state tourney.
And the Wolves still could.
While it suffered a major stumble Thursday, falling in five sets to a school it swept 3-0 the first time around, and doing so by continually misfiring and having to fight back from deficits, this is still a very-talented team.
Now, these Wolves, led by seniors Ashley Menges and Emma Smith, will have to brush off their 25-18, 23-25, 25-18, 19-25, 15-5 loss to the Eagles and prove they are as mentally tough as they are skilled.
This weekend, Coupeville travels to Eastern Washington for the 14-team Wenatchee Invite, where the Wolves will get a chance to work out the kinks against much-bigger schools.
Monday, Oct. 15 brings a major gut-check, as CHS hosts South Whidbey, which it edged in five titanic sets the first time around.
The Wolves (4-2 in league, 7-2 overall) and Falcons (4-2, 7-4) are tied for second-place in the North Sound Conference, two back of King’s (6-0, 9-1) and a game up on Cedar Park (3-3, 7-4) with four to play.
Granite Falls (1-5, 3-7) and Sultan (0-6, 3-7) bring up the rear.
The loss to CPC was a largely self-inflicted one, as the Wolves piled up hitting errors, blunting their often-ferocious attack.
Emma Smith and Menges combined to stuff an Eagle spike in the early going, knotting things up at 3-3 in the first set, but things quickly spiraled out of control.
Coupeville’s only lead in the opening frame was at 2-1, and it fell behind by as many as eight points, allowing CPC to claim first blood.
The second set was better, if not a smashing success, as the Wolves never trailed by more than a single point.
Chelsea Prescott and Emma Smith brought out the big hammers, drilling winners which ripped holes through the fabric of time and space, while Hannah Davidson dropped a superb tip winner which froze all the Eagles in place.
The Wolves went ahead for good at 19-18, after Maya Toomey-Stout bounced a spike off of a girl’s elbow, then “The Gazelle” topped herself several plays later when she lasered a winner while hanging in mid-air at mid-court.
But, as quickly as Coupeville found its mojo, it lost it again, trailing from the first serve to the final aborted spike in the third set.
Toomey-Stout and Emma Smith delivered big kills in frame three, but the Wolves, normally a very-efficient team at the service stripe, struggled to sustain any runs.
The best play in set three was a desperation one, in which Menges, crashing to her knees, threw out an arm and kept a seemingly-dead play alive, setting up an eventual winner from Davidson.
Things turned really dark in the early moments of the fourth set, with CHS falling behind 7-1.
But Toomey-Stout came bounding down the middle, took a jack rabbit jump in front of the net and speared the ball for a winner, injecting a jolt of electricity through her teammates and the (unfairly) sparse crowd.
Scout Smith, mainlining some of her running mate’s energy, out-fought an Eagle as they both went for a tip winner at the same moment.
Flexing her biceps, the Wolf junior held her ground (while in the air), forcing the ball up and over her foe’s fingertips, then pumping her fist as it slapped down and skidded away for a winner.
Coupeville claimed its first lead of the set at 11-10 and never surrendered it, with Prescott tagging balls off of wayward Eagles, Emma Smith ripping off arms with her kills and Toomey-Stout going “Maya Oh My” on one nuclear detonation of a put-away.
But when you spend all night digging yourself out of holes, you burn through a lot of energy, and it showed in the fifth and deciding set.
Other than one nice kill from Emma Smith, the final frame was a series of balls hitting Wolf hands and shooting off to the side, and despite several time outs, Coupeville couldn’t put a halt to a final tsunami of Eagle points.
The final score, and the night as a whole, left CHS coach Cory Whitmore drained.
“We have things to work on, and we will,” he said as he rubbed his temples. “I’m excited we took it to five sets, when we weren’t headed that way, and, overall, we passed better.
“This weekend will be a good opportunity for us.”
Toomey-Stout paced the Wolves Thursday with 14 kills, nine digs and two aces, while Emma Mathusek went low for 13 gigs and Scout Smith passed out 29 assists.
Prescott (six kills, five digs, two aces), Emma Smith (11 kills), Menges (three aces) and Davidson (four kills) all chipped in, with swing player Zoe Trujillo firing off a kill on the first play she was on the floor.
To see everything John Fisken shot Thursday, pop over to:
https://www.johnsphotos.net/Sports/Coupeville-Volleyball-2018-2019/VB-2018-10-11-vs-CPC/
And remember, purchases help fund scholarships for CHS senior student/athletes.
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