Coupeville Sports

  Valen Trujillo added to her impressive floor burn collection Tuesday night. (John Fisken photos)

A Wolf Buddie displays the sign she made to support her team.

Very few people can pull off the full-body forward cartwheel at max speed on the volleyball court quite like Valen Trujillo.

The Coupeville High School sophomore is the master at flinging her body every which way in pursuit of balls, even when she has to go head over tail to make the shot.

It’s a skill she showed off often Tuesday night, as her dives grew more and more desperate in an effort to counter the spikes leveled by visiting Bellevue Christian.

Unfortunately, while she’ll probably have some new floor burns to display in the morning, she couldn’t single-handedly stem the tide, and super-slow starts in every set eventually cost the Wolves.

The 25-10, 25-17, 25-18 non-conference loss dropped Coupeville to 0-5.

The match was the first in nearly two weeks for CHS (it hadn’t played since Sept. 25) and the Wolves were rusty.

All three sets featured a disturbing pattern. Dig a big early hole, start to rally, then run out of time and points.

Bellevue opened 8-1, 9-1 and 7-1 leads in consecutive sets, never allowing Coupeville to hold a lead at any point in the match.

Things warmed up a bit after the first set, which had a few nice serves and a floor-shaking spike from Kacie Kiel and little else positive to talk about.

After falling behind in the second, the Wolves finally strung together a bit of a rally.

A 7-2 run, punctuated by a service ace from Trujillo that kissed the back corner of the court and a perfectly nicked tip from Hailey Hammer that won the match’s longest back-and-forth, seemed to promise a revival.

Coupeville fought off two set points, the second when McKenzie Bailey soared up into the heavens to deliver a knee-shredding kill, but the Vikings lead was too substantial to overcome.

Cue the third set and the same exact result, almost play by play.

Down 15-5, the Wolves rallied for a bit, with one play in particular standing out.

Trujillo went head over heels to save a ball with winner written all over it, giving Coupeville time to keep the play alive.

Two hits later, Hammer, with her back to the net, dropped a winner over her head and the net, perfectly splitting two defenders who both whiffed while running into each other.

But again, too little, too late, as the Wolves held off match point three times before succumbing on the fourth try.

To go with her floor burns, Trujillo was credited with 17 digs, while Hammer (four kills), Kiel (two kills, four service aces) and Madeline Strasburg (two kills, two aces) led the stat sheet.

Freshman Lauren Rose dealt out a team-high seven assists from her setter position.

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