Volleyball team is turning up the heat

Published 7:40 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Mount Si Wildcats’ volleyball team played a very competitive match with the first-place Issaquah Eagles Oct. 10, but couldn’t bring home the victory. Issaquah won in four games, 25-15, 28-26, 21-25 and 25-17.

Alisha Larion had 10 kills to lead Mount Si and Amy Ayers, Danielle Rehm, Miranda Pratt and Rachel Brun had three aces each to pace a strong serving game for the Wildcats. Faith Hutcherson added 27 assists.

The Wildcats returned home last Thursday hoping to build off the defeat against the Eagles. Mount Si did just that with a resounding three-game sweep of a very good Mercer Island team. Scores were 25-20, 25-13 and 25-11 as the Wildcats clinched no worse than a .500 record in league. “We played Mount Si volleyball tonight and it was exciting to see,” Wildcat coach Bonnie Foote said.

Several factors played into the victory. “We’ve been working really hard in practice on our serving and our serve-receive because that’s killed us in a lot of games when we didn’t do that properly, so I think we played a lot better tonight in that respect and our outside hitters were awesome. Miranda [Pratt] and Alisha [Larion] were great,” Rehm said.

The Islanders controlled much of the first game. They took the lead at 5-4 and held it most of the way. The Wildcats fought back and behind strong serving from Brun and athletic play by all players on the floor, were able to tie the game 17-17 and then take the lead for good at 20-19. A kill on the third game point by the Wildcats closed out the come-from-behind victory.

Mount Si did not let up in the second game. The Wildcats busted out behind the play of Hutcherson and Larion to a big early lead and never looked back. A service ace off the net by Sine Schirmer took care of the second game for the Wildcats. “Faith made the most amazing saves that I’ve ever seen a setter make,” Foote said. Hutcherson finished with eight digs and 18 assists. Larion added eight kills.

The Wildcats put the attack into cruise control the rest of the way, using a 9-0 run early in the game to blow out to a huge 11-2 lead. With the score 15-5, Mount Si was awarded a point after a Mercer Island mistake.

Unfortunately for the Islanders, not only did they lose the point, they lost one of their key players, Amanda Nield, to an apparent wrist injury. While diving for the ball, Nield slid into the support pole holding the net, resulting in the injury.

The injury appeared to take whatever wind the Islanders had left out of their sails as Brun hit three consecutive aces following the injury delay. Mercer Island hit the ball out of bounds on match point, giving the match to the Wildcats. “Well, we really wanted to win this game. It was a big deal to us so we had to push and we knew it would be a challenge, but we pulled through and it was amazing. Our adrenaline was so high and it was a great game,” Larion said.

Mount Si played Sammamish to wrap up the league schedule Tuesday night (they have a bye Thursday) and won’t play again until next Monday at 6:45 p.m. in a nonleague match against fellow Kingco 3A member Newport. The match is the final home match of the regular season for seniors Hutcherson, Ayers and Alison Loud. The three will be honored prior to the contest.