Haylee Armstrong and her Wolf teammates came up big at crunch time Friday night. (Michelle Armstrong photos)
Tenley Stuurmans is a closer.
Delivering the knockout punch on set point in all three frames Friday night, the Coupeville High School junior sparked the Wolf varsity volleyball squad to its first victory of the young season.
With all nine players in uniform filling up the stat sheet, CHS held off a feisty Orcas Island team to capture a 25-22, 26-24, 25-23 home win, moving into a tie for first place in the Northwest 2B/1B League.
Now sitting at 1-0 in conference play, 1-2 overall, Scout Smith’s kill-happy spikers are tied with Darrington (1-0, 5-0) and La Conner (1-0, 3-0) atop the seven-team league.
After competitive four-set losses to 4A Mariner and 1A South Whidbey in their opening matches, the Wolves rocked the gym Friday, much to the delight of a vocal hometown crowd.
Not that Orcas went down easy, as the Vikings pushed CHS every step of the way.
The opening set was a classic example of that, as Coupeville built a 20-9 lead, then had to weather a 12-3 run by the visitors before closing things out.
Stuurmans and Arianna Cunningham paced the Wolves at the service stripe in the early going, while fab frosh Rhylee Inman made her mom scream in joy after elevating to stuff an Orcas shot at the net.
Lexis Drake and Zariyah Allen joined Inman in delivering big-time hits at close range, both slicing winners as CHS seemed to be running away with the match.
Cue a big rally from the Vikings, however, as Orcas turned an 11-point deficit into just two at 23-21.
Coupeville had the answer and her name was Tenley, as she smoked a set-ending winner that tore a fiery path as the ball ripped wood off the floor and skidded away while her teammates whooped and hollered.
Set #2 was almost a flipped version of set #1, as this time Orcas snatched the early lead, before Coupeville stormed back.
Big winners from young guns Inman, Allen, and Kennedy O’Neill kept CHS close, while Cunningham danced a ballet while airborne, artfully dropping tips where the Viking defenders weren’t.
Still, even with Willow Leedy-Bonifas making a one-armed save on a runaway ball and killer cousins Haylee Armstrong and Capri Anter providing a jolt of maximum energy, the Wolves had to hold off a set point to keep Orcas from tying the match at a set apiece.
Coupeville closed on a 6-3 run, with Drake firing off well-placed serves and Stuurmans stuffing the Vikings for the set-winning point.
CHS seniors (l to r) Armstrong, Lexis Drake, and Capri Anter are riveted by the action.
All the momentum belonged to the Wolves, it seemed, up two sets to none, and yet Orcas led from 1-0 all the way to 23-22 in the third frame.
The freshman played like seasoned pros, with Allen slicing and dicing and Inman reaching back over her head to pop a winner, while grizzled vet Cunningham went on a rampage.
At one point she connected on winners four times in a five-point run, hitting each ball in a unique style, while also finding time later to rip off a couple service aces just to keep everyone nervous.
And yet, even with Stuurmans sprawling on the floor to revive a seemingly dead rally, leading to a push winner from Armstrong, Orcas had an answer for every Wolf surge.
At least for a while.
CHS fell behind 5-0, finally tied things up at 13-13, 17-17, and 19-19, yet couldn’t pull ahead until Armstrong got artful in the very late going.
With the Wolves trailing 23-21, the senior ended a long rally by flicking a winner into a small crack in the defense, then immediately followed it up with a resounding service ace to knot things at 23-23.
An Orcas spike that missed the endline by about 10 feet gave Coupeville its first lead of the set, and on match point, it was Tenley Time once again.
Stuuurmans, making it three-for-three, closed the set and the match by swinging the hammer of the gods, unleashing a hot ‘n spicy spike winner which hit with such fury even the feistiest of Vikings couldn’t dream of returning it.
Friday stats:
Zariyah Allen — 3 kills, 1 dig, 1 block assist
Capri Anter — 14 digs, 3 aces
Haylee Armstrong — 2 kills, 3 digs, 3 assists, 2 aces
Arianna Cunningham — 7 kills, 5 digs, 2 assists, 3 aces
Lexis Drake — 2 kills, 2 aces
Rhylee Inman — 3 kills, 1 solo block
Willow Leedy-Bonifas — 22 digs, 1 assist, 1 ace
Kennedy O’Neill — 2 kills
Tenley Stuurmans — 4 kills, 10 digs, 11 assists, 1 solo block, 1 block assist, 4 aces
