Coupeville Sports

   Wolf spikers Hope Lodell (left) and Payton Aparicio get ready to kick some fanny. (John Fisken photo)

Inch by inch, sport by sport, Coupeville is taking the 1A Olympic League away from Klahowya.

When things started in the fall of 2014, the Eagles, who have the largest student body of the four league schools by a fair margin, were dominant.

Klahowya won titles in three of four fall sports (volleyball, boys tennis, girls soccer) in that first go-round, with Port Townsend claiming the football crown.

Jump forward a year and Coupeville, which sits at 227 students to Klahowya’s 445, took away the boys tennis title. The other three fall sports saw repeat winners.

Now skip forward to season #3 and the Wolves have held on to boys tennis and snatched volleyball away from the Eagles.

Klahowya just three-peated in girls soccer, but that’s it for the fall, as the football title is going to come down to next week’s clash between Port Townsend and Cascade Christian.

With the Nisqually and Olympic League joining together for gridiron action this year, there’s a (super) solid shot the pigskin kingpin will hail from the other league.

So, that means in three falls, Klahowya’s titles have gone from three to two to one, while Coupeville has gone from zero to one to two — the small tugboat chugging past the flailing ocean liner.

Overall, the Eagles, who led the title chase 5-2 after the 2014-2015 school year, are now barely hanging on to a 9-8 advantage in league championships won heading into basketball season, where the Wolf girls are two-time defending champs.

Chimacum has four titles (two each in boys basketball and softball) while Port Townsend, the second-largest league school, has just two football crowns and will need a colossal upset to earn #3 this coming Saturday.

With tennis done playing league matches, and the other three sports days away from heading to the postseason, Coupeville and Klahowya are tied with 16 varsity wins across the four fall sports.

Port Townsend has seven and Chimacum four.

Rain cost Coupeville the chance to be sitting alone at the top in the victory race. The final two league tennis matches were cancelled and not rescheduled, as the Wolves (4-0) had already clinched the title.

CHS has six more league games (1 soccer, 2 football, 3 volleyball) left to build their fall win total, while Klahowya has seven (2 soccer, 2 FB, 2 VB).

Standings through Sunday:

Olympic/Nisqually League football:

Olympic League volleyball:

Olympic League girls soccer:

Olympic League boys tennis:

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   Senior captain Valen Trujillo has helped lead the Wolf spikers to five straight wins. (John Fisken photos)

Jakobi Baumann and the CHS netters are league champs in 2016.

It’s a two-team race.

There are four schools in the 1A Olympic League, but this fall there has been a pretty wide chasm ripped right down the middle.

When you look at the four sports in which Coupeville competes against Port Townsend, Chimacum and Klahowya, it’s all Wolves and Eagles and very little Cowboys or RedHawks.

As it sits now, Coupeville has 13 league wins across volleyball, tennis, soccer and football, with Klahowya right behind at 11.

Port Townsend, which hasn’t won a league volleyball match and only has a handful of tennis players who compete with Chimacum, has four victories.

If it weren’t for football (where Berkley Hill has run his way to claiming the RedHawks three wins), PT would be firmly wedged in the cellar alongside the Cowboys.

Chimacum has yet to win a football game or a soccer or tennis match this fall, with the Cowboys lone W coming on the volleyball court.

The biggest news of the week came when the first of four fall titles was claimed, with Coupeville clinching its second straight boys’ tennis crown.

The battle for the other three titles, and the overall lead in varsity league wins, will intensify in the coming weeks, as the focus turns firmly to conference bouts.

Football teams have four league games left, while volleyball has five and each soccer squad still needs to play four to five games.

There are just two tennis league tilts still on the schedule, with Chimacum facing off against Coupeville and Klahowya each once more.

Unless it rains.

With the title already decided, and the league tourney fast approaching, officials decided not to reschedule any rain-outs (such as the one Oct. 6 when Coupeville was scheduled to play at Klahowya).

Up-to-the-minute standings:

Olympic/Nisqually League football:

Olympic League volleyball:

Olympic League girls soccer:

Olympic League boys tennis:

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