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Posts Tagged ‘Mount Vernon Christian’

Good to the last shot!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, Girls Basketball, tagged , , , , , on December 2, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Jean Lund-Olsen’s fingers tell the tale — two JV games Friday, two wins for Coupeville. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

The small gym was hoppin’.

While the varsity basketball teams lit up the Coupeville High School gym Friday, the Wolf JV squads took turns winning thrillers against visiting Mount Vernon Christian across the hallway.

The CHS boys pulled away in the fourth quarter for a 38-36 win, evening their record at 1-1, while the girls emerged from overtime with a 24-22 victory to climb to 2-1 on the season.

Girls fight back:

Trailing 13-7 at the half, the Wolves steadily chipped away at the lead, cutting away three points in both the third and fourth quarters.

After losing its lead, MVC hit a late bucket to re-tie the game, then had a chance to win in the final three seconds.

Wolf frosh Chelsea Prescott read the play nicely, though, intercepting the in-bounds pass and sending the game to overtime, where one perfect play won the night.

Running a play it had recently installed, Coupeville used a “soccer-style” pass from pitch vet Tia Wurzrainer to Mollie Bailey to set up the only bucket of the extra period.

The wild finish capped what CHS coach Amy King termed a “back-and-forth, soccer-style game,” in which the ball was frequently loose, bodies were frequently crashing into one another, shots kept popping back out of the cylinder and there were “a million steals.”

Prescott racked up the best numbers in the scoring column with 10 (she also had five blocks and four steals), while Avalon Renninger (6), Nicole Lester (4), Bailey (2) and Wurzrainer (2) also tallied points.

Boys win a back-and-forth affair:

Both squads took turns surging, with Coupeville up 12-7 after one, down 20-19 at the half, then tied at 25-25 heading into the final eight minutes.

Once there, the Wolves got a pair of crunch-time three-balls from freshman Alex Jimenez, one of five CHS players to score in the fourth quarter.

Sophomore Mason Grove paced Coupeville with a game-high 16, netting five three-point bombs and a crucial free throw, while Ulrik Wells pounded down low for seven points.

Jean Lund-Olsen (6), Jimenez (6), Daniel Olson (2) and David Prescott (1) all chipped in to round out the scoring attack.

“The young guys really stepped up for us tonight,” said Coupeville coach Chris Smith.

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Nipped at the end!!

Posted in Girls Basketball, tagged , , , , on December 2, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Ema Smith fights through the Mount Vernon Christian defense. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

   Allison Wenzel keeps a watchful eye on the defender as she drives the ball up-court.

As a work in progress, the Coupeville High School girls basketball squad is going to hit a few bumps in the road this season.

Having lost four starters, the Wolves are not the same team which cruised to a third-straight league title last year.

They are young, talented, but still developing. And that was showcased Friday night.

At times, the Wolves looked very good, especially on defense, where they shut-down visiting Mount Vernon Christian for a seven-minute stretch in the second quarter.

But then, at other times, the Wolves looked tentative, and, unfortunately, one of those times came during the game’s closing minutes.

Losing the grip on a lead it had held for two-plus quarters, Coupeville went cold from the field down the stretch, watching as a 26-26 tie turned into a 35-29 loss.

The non-conference defeat drops the Wolves to 0-3 heading into a game Saturday with Flinders Christian, an Australian traveling team.

That game, which will be played at South Whidbey High School, tips at 11 AM.

Coupeville, which had held the lead from the first moments of the second quarter, finally fell behind, briefly, with seven minutes left in the game.

The Wolves responded strongly, though, getting a free throw from Mikayla Elfrank and a bucket from Lindsey Roberts to knot the game at 26.

The game-tying layup came courtesy sophomore guard Scout Smith, who retrieved a loose ball and pegged a sizzling pass that dropped onto Roberts fingertips in mid-stride.

It brought the crowd to its collective feet, led the MVC coach to call a timeout, and seemed to signal the start of a strong finale for Coupeville.

It wasn’t to be, though, as the Hurricanes hit on back-to-back three-point plays to bust the game open.

The first came on a lurching layup and ensuing free throw, courtesy of a ticky-tack foul call, while the second was an admittedly pretty dang impressive three-ball.

MVC had shooters willing to air the ball out, and they won the battle from behind the arc 15-0, thanks to five three-pointers that splashed home.

The first was a gut-wrencher, with the ball hitting the bottom of the net with 0:00.1 of a second left on the clock in the first quarter.

Coupeville refused to bend a knee in the game’s final moments, though, as Ema Smith and Kalia Littlejohn came hard after Hurricane ball-handlers as the game clock ticked down.

Ema Smith, making her season debut, had a particularly strong series of plays in the final 45 seconds, twice forcing jump balls before knocking down a long jumper that was a half-step away from being a three-ball of its own.

While that shot was a dagger, her teammate, Sarah Wright, had the most entertaining basket of the night.

The Wolf junior stopped and popped a shot early in the second quarter which bounced around, hitting every single side of the rim multiple times.

All 10 players eventually stood and watched as the ball bounced, bucked, popped and then, after an eternity, splashed through, giving Wright an opportunity to justifiably fist-pump as she back-pedaled.

While the Wolves didn’t get a break-out scoring performance, they did share the work, with Elfrank topping the charts with nine points and 11 rebounds.

Roberts and Littlejohn knocked down five points apiece, while Ema Smith (4), Wright (4) and Kyla Briscoe (2) rounded out the attack.

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Bring the noise! Bring the joy!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, tagged , , , , , , on December 1, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Ethan Spark scored a game-high 21 Friday, netting five three-point bombs in a Wolf win. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

“They want it pretty bad.”

As he basked in the glow of his first win as a varsity basketball coach Friday, Brad Sherman wanted to make one thing clear — in his eyes, all the credit goes to his players.

Having inherited a senior-heavy roster, the former Coupeville High School hoops star has unleashed the current Wolves on defense, and it’s paying immediate dividends.

Harassing visiting Mount Vernon Christian every inch of the floor, CHS turned a close game into a rout in the second half, then coasted home with a 49-37 win.

The non-conference victory evens Coupeville’s record at 1-1.

The Wolves got strong offensive work from Ethan Spark and Hunter Smith, who combined to score 41 of their team’s 49 points, but it was defense which turned the tide in this one.

The kind of defense where it looked like five rabid dogs attacking as one, poking passes, rejecting shots, forcing turnovers and mental errors and being a royal pain in the tush to anyone unlucky enough to be wearing a Hurricanes uniform.

“I really liked our intensity on defense,” Sherman said. “We were flying all over the place, applying ball pressure and closing down the passing lanes, just making it very hard for the other team to run any kind of offense.”

Coupeville’s starting five – Smith, Spark, Cameron Toomey-Stout, Joey Lippo and Hunter Downes – are all seniors, and have yet to see a Wolf boys hoops squad post a winning record during their tenure.

Friday night, those recent struggles seemed far away, though, as the Wolves fed off a boisterous crowd, and vice versa.

There were times, with the joint rocking, where the excitement level hit the kind of highs it did back when Sherman and his classmates were soaring to success in the early 2000’s.

Whether it was Lippo rising up to reject a shot, Downes swinging his elbows while rebounding, begging any fool to get too close, or Spark making off with steals, the Wolves were in shut-down mode.

And that was most evident when Smith and Toomey-Stout, All-Conference defensive backs on the football fields, continually broke up passes in mid-sprint.

Even when they didn’t get an outright steal, balls were repeatedly jarred free and MVC, which had a distinct height advantage, got more and more gun shy and frustrated.

Adding to their intensity on defense, the Wolves chose the right moment to showcase their offensive attack, closing each of the first three quarters with a substantial run.

The first came after Coupeville fell behind 6-1 midway through the first quarter.

Mixing four free throws — two each from Smith and Spark — and a pair of buckets, Coupeville closed the period on an 8-2 tear, grabbing its first lead with less than a tick on the clock.

The go-ahead bucket came courtesy Lippo, who ripped a rebound free from a Hurricane, spun and rose up to swish a sweet fall-away jumper that tickled the twine with 0:00.3 to play.

The two teams traded baskets to kick off the second quarter, with MVC taking its final lead of the night at 16-14.

After that, the final three minutes of the half were a thing of beauty (if you were a CHS fan, at least).

Smith hung in the air for an impossible amount of time before hitting a jumper on his way down, before Spark … um … lit the spark with the first of what would be five three-point bombs.

Just to make sure MVC knew the jig was up, Smith rattled home his own three-ball, and, as it splatted through the net, he became only the 42nd male Wolf player (in 101 years) to reach 500 career points.

But, wait, there’s more!

Dribbling out the final seconds of the half, Smith sucked in all five defenders, who were dead certain he was driving to the hoop.

Instead, he whistled a pass right onto the fingertips of junior Dane Lucero, who banged home the quarter-capping layup for his first-ever varsity points.

If MVC went into the locker room still holding out hope, with the margin just 24-18, that vanished, hard, in the third.

Spark, who earned praise from his coach for his off-season dedication to working on his shooting, went ballistic, raining down three consecutive treys, each shot getting deeper and deeper into the darkest corner of the court.

As each ball hit, flipping the net skyward with a happy little sigh, the crowd, which has been somewhat dormant at times in recent years, went progressively more berserk.

The loudest scream might have come for two boom-boom plays to cap the third.

Downes and Smith, who combined for many a touchdown as quarterback and receiver, connected again, with Downes yanking a ball free, then lofting it three-quarters of the court.

His target caught it in perfect stride, flipped it up for a layup … then promptly stole the in-bounds pass and scored again.

With everything clicking, Coupeville stretched the lead out to as many as 18 points twice, the final one coming at 47-29 when sophomore Jacobi Pacquette-Pilgrim netted a free throw for his first varsity point.

While an 8-2 MVC run to close the game tightened the score just a bit, the Hurricanes left the court heads bowed, looking very much like a team which just got bushwhacked.

For Coupeville’s players, and its fans, the early-season win set off a celebration, and, for Sherman, a never-ending string of congratulatory handshakes.

Spark finished with 21 to pace the Wolves, while Smith popped for 20.

With 509 career points, he passed Jason Bagby (499) and David Lortz (502) Friday to move into 41st on the all-time CHS boys hoops scoring list.

Downes chipped in with three, Lippo and Lucero knocked down buckets and Pacquette-Pilgrim’s free throw capped the scoring.

While Coupeville’s seniors led the attack, sophomores Jered Brown and Gavin Knoblich also saw valuable floor time.

The Wolves now get a week to rest up, not returning to action until Friday, Dec. 8, when Sequim comes to town.

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Monday night massacre!!

Posted in Girls Soccer, tagged , , , , on September 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Sophomore Natalie Hollrigel was one of many Wolf booters who played with fire and passion Monday in a 7-2 win. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

The goals came early, they came late and they came in bunches.

Raining down shots from every angle Monday, the Coupeville High School girls soccer squad romped to a 7-2 win over visiting Mount Vernon Christian.

It was a game of total domination, as the Wolves battered and abused their non-conference foes every step of the way.

All in all, it was a nice cap to a brutal opening stretch of the schedule, as CHS has essentially played a game every other day so far.

Now 4-2 after winning for the fourth time in its last five games, Coupeville finally gets a breather, as it plays just three times over the next two weeks.

While their legs might be tired, the Wolves have shown a splendid scoring touch, racking up 28 goals in the opening stages of the season.

Junior Kalia Littlejohn has 12 of those, including a hat trick Monday, which runs her career total to 30 goals.

That pulls her within five of the program’s career scoring record of 35, tallied by her older sister, Mia Littlejohn, between 2014-12016.

In the early going Monday, though, it was the Renninger sisters who got things going.

Older sister Sage wasted little time, burying a vicious shot from the right side barely a minute into the game.

A little over two minutes later, it was time for lil’ sis Avalon to upstage her, as the sophomore sharpshooter cranked home a bullet from the left corner that curved over the goalie’s shoulder, then dropped in with a soft splash.

Coupeville kept the ball on Mount Vernon’s side of the field for much of the first half, firing shot after shot at the Hurricane goaltender.

From the four-minute mark to the 27-minute mark, the Wolves fired up nine shots to one from MVC, and yet, in a quirk of fate, the only missile to find pay-dirt was the one the opposing team launched.

Up 2-1 in a game that felt like it should have already been 20-1, CHS finally got that straightened out.

Genna Wright sucked the defense to her, then dropped a seeing-eye pass right in front of Littlejohn, who caught the ball with her right leg, deftly flipped it behind her back to her left leg, then poked it into the back of the net.

Coupeville tacked on a fourth goal eight minutes before the halftime break, when Sage Renninger crushed a corner kick into a thicket of players in front of the net.

With both Wright and Littlejohn up in her face, a panicky MVC defender accidentally deflected the shot into the corner of the net.

It’s the second time this season Renninger has gotten an assist by forcing an own goal by an opposing team.

While offense was the focus most of the day, the Wolf defense did its best to make life super-smooth for goalie Sarah Wright.

Mallory Kortuem made a sensational scramble back to deny a breakaway, using her sprinter speed to catch the play and her nimble toes to steal the ball away.

Her fellow defender, Tia Wurzrainer, stopped another play the old-fashioned way, by roughing up the shooter from behind, sending her sprawling face-first into the turf.

While an overly-protective ref gave the feisty sophomore a yellow card for the play, the Wolf fans jamming the stands were much more appreciative.

The second half was more of the same, with Coupeville bashing away on shot after shot.

Littlejohn added two more goals, both on unique plays, while Genna Wright capped things by looping in her fifth score of the season.

Goals #2 and #3 for Littlejohn were highlight-worthy, for vastly different reasons.

On the first, Kalia swung and, for one of the few times in her career, completely whiffed on a ball.

With the defense on its heels, she paused for a split-second, then promptly blasted the ball through the back of the net, before turning and heading back up-field, shaking her head and laughing.

Littlejohn’s final goal belonged 98.6% to Lindsey Roberts.

The junior with the bionic leg unleashed a 30-yard cannon shot that smacked into the MVC goalie’s arms with a bang, then bounced free.

Following the ball all the way, Littlejohn leaned in and popped the rebound into the back of the net, adding one final bit of frustration to the Hurricane netminder’s day.

On the other side of the field there was a lot more happiness.

After Sarah Wright was spot-on in the first half, she gave way to freshman Mollie Bailey, who made two crowd-pleasing saves to cap the game.

On one, Bailey went airborne to snag a hard shot, getting far more air than expected, while on the other, she timed her jump perfectly, punching the ball up and over the crossbar.

Over on the sideline, both the official goalie guru, Gary Manker, and the unofficial one, former Wolf net-minder Lauren Grove, who worked with her successors before the game, were all smiles.

It was a look shared by head coach Kyle Nelson.

“Our focus and our goal is to keep on improving, take small steps and we will be a heck of a team by the end of the season,” he said. “And we’re already showing a lot of positive steps that way.”

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Spikers serve up big opening win!!

Posted in Volleyball, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Payton Aparicio delivered eight aces and three kills Tuesday in an opening night win. (John Fisken photo)

The Wolves aren’t afraid of any Hurricanes.

Raining down laser serves from every angle, the Coupeville High School volleyball squad blew the hinges off the Mount Vernon Christian gym Tuesday night.

By the time they were done, the Wolves had romped to a season-opening 25-10, 25-7, 25-17 non-conference win, kicking off the new year in style.

“It went well last night, as our first game of the season spent on the road, and at the tail end of an exciting first day of school,” CHS coach Cory Whitmore said. “I was pleased to see us perform up to our current potential and not let an opponent dictate the speed and consistency of the game.”

Coupeville, picking up where it left off last year, seized the advantage at the service line.

Senior Payton Aparicio lashed a team-high eight aces, while Ashley Menges dropped in six and last year’s #1 threat, Hope Lodell, whacked five.

Everyone wearing a Wolf uniform seemed to be in a groove when they stepped to the stripe, with eight different CHS players recording at least one ace.

Scout Smith (3), Kyla Briscoe (2), Allison Wenzel (2), Katrina McGranahan (1) and Maya Toomey-Stout (1) rounded out the big guns, as Coupeville racked up 28 aces on the night.

“I was happy to see our serving pick up in contrast to the jamboree,” Whitmore said. “We were tentative on Saturday, but last night we served consistent and aggressive.”

When the ball was in play, the Wolves stayed aggressive, recording a strong .258 hitting percentage on the night.

Menges and Smith combined for 16 assists, while Aparicio, McGranahan and Briscoe connected on three kills apiece.

“Happy with what I saw tonight,” Whitmore said. “We’re looking forward to practice this week to progress.”

Coupeville heads to Langley Saturday for the South Whidbey Invite, a five-team event which will pit the two Island schools against Friday Harbor, Orcas Island and Nooksack Valley.

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