The future is now, as Kyla Briscoe (8) and fellow freshmen Lauren Rosen and Katrina McGranahan are seeing solid varsity time. (John Fisken photos)
Wolf booters, fenced in, but ready to break out Thursday and claim second place in the Olympic League.
One team is in the playoffs. One will have to fight for its postseason life.
Everything will be decided Thursday. Maybe.
After absorbing incredibly narrow defeats Tuesday, both the Coupeville High School volleyball and girls’ soccer squads are facing must-win situations when they reunite with Port Townsend for their regular season finales.
Those games, coming on the heels of twin defeats on the road, will be on Whidbey (5 PM starts for both) tomorrow.
The Wolf girls’ soccer team (5-6-1 overall, 2-3 in Olympic League play) fell 1-0 to Port Townsend (3-10, 2-3), which has won back-to-back games after starting its season roughly.
With Chimacum (2-12, 1-5) losing 8-0 to Klahowya (14-1, 6-0) Tuesday, the Cowboys were eliminated from contention.
The Coupeville/Port Townsend rematch will be a battle for second place in a league where the top three make the playoffs.
While the Wolves are in, a win Thursday would be huge.
The #2 team gets a loser-out home playoff game Nov. 1 against the #3 team from the Nisqually League, while the #3 Olympic League team has to travel, facing the #2 Nisqually Valley squad.
While the booters will be playing for positioning, the Wolf spikers will be just trying to survive.
After falling 25-5, 31-33, 24-26, 25-23, 15-11 to Port Townsend, CHS (1-10, 1-4) is mired in last place, trailing Chimacum (4-9, 2-4) by a half game and the Redhawks (8-5, 2-3) by a game.
Klahowya (14-0, 6-0) has the title safely in hand, but Thursday’s rematch will decide the final two playoff spots. Or blow everything up.
A Port Townsend win would give it the #2 seed (and a home playoff match), while Chimacum would be #3 and Coupeville would be done.
But, if the Wolves can rebound and win, which is very reasonable given that they almost won Tuesday, that would create a three-way tie at 2-4.
If that happens, the three schools would have a mini-playoff to decide the #2 and #3 seeds.
The first match-up between Coupeville and Port Townsend got off to a sour start, then turned into a donnybrook.
“A tough loss tonight! They played their hearts out (with the exception of game #1) and can’t wait to take PT on again on Thursday,” CHS coach Breanne Smedley said. “We did a good job of reducing our errors and playing to our potential tonight.
“We just had a hard time holding on to some of our early leads in the fourth and fifth games, leaving us with too much catch-up to do towards the end.”
Valen Trujillo paced the Wolves with a flawless 23-for-23 performance at the service stripe, including three aces. She also went low a team-high 38 digs.
Lauren Rose doled out 37 assists, fellow freshman Katrina McGranahan collected three blocks and the big three — Hailey Hammer (15 kills, six digs), Kacie Kiel (10 kills, 25 digs) and Madeline Strasburg (eight kills, 23 digs, five aces) filled up the stat sheet.
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