It’s A First! Nc Girls Win Aaa Volleyball
North Central rewrote its history on Saturday by ignoring Lewis and Clark’s volleyball history.
The Indians won their school’s first girls state championship by stopping a team accustomed to state titles.
Down one game to defending champ LC and trailing 7-4 in the second game, NC exploded for a 13-15, 15-8, 15-7 win at the WIAA/U.S. Bank State AAA tournament.
LC, also the ‘92 champ, had won 25 consecutive games at state entering the evening’s title match at the Arena. The Tigers made it 26 straight by scoring the final six points of Game One. LC was well on its way to No. 27 when a human battering ram named Tamara Van Engelen stepped front and center.
Van Engelen, a senior 6-footer, had three key kills to close out the second game and five kills as NC stormed to a 10-2 final-game lead.
Throw in NC’s other senior middle hitter, 5-10 Aimee Wilson, and the smaller Tigers were forced to get by with defense. The LC defense, so dominant through six tournament matches, finally showed cracks at the end.
“Defense was the key,” Wilson said. “They’re a real good defensive team. They keep going and going … and we had to keep going at them.”
“They had two big horses and their supporting cast came through,” said LC coach Buzzie Welch.
NC’s last state title in any sport came in 1977, from boys cross country. Before that came a ‘48 state title in boys basketball.
The Indians’ dream season seemed impossible after they finished fourth in the Greater Spokane League and fourth at the district tournament. NC began to show its true colors at region, where it finished second. After finishing unbeaten during Friday’s pool play, NC stomped Puyallup and previously unbeaten River Ridge to make the final.
“When we won that second game (against LC), we all stepped up to another level,” Van Engelen said.
“They just needed to relax,” NC coach Linda Bushinski said of the slow start. “When they relaxed, they played their own game.”
Placing matches
River Ridge beat Columbia River 15-6, 15-12 in the match for third and fourth; Prairie beat Bethel 16-14, 15-0 for fifth and sixth; and Ferris beat Puyallup 15-6, 15-8 for seventh and eighth.
River Ridge jumped to 7-0 leads in both games and finished the tourney 6-1.
“This is our first time coming to state and we wanted to finish as strong as we could,” said River Ridge coach Bob Stevens.
Prairie fashioned an eye-popping string. Trailing 14-6, the Falcons scored the final 10 points of the first game then shut out Bethel in the second.
A relaxed Ferris let its seniors take care of matters in the first game, then substituted frequently in the second. Missy Blackshire had 12 kills, Molly Jones 23 assists, and Lea Ruhl and K.C. Richards nine digs apiece for the Saxons.
“We took a light-hearted approach to the seventh-place match,” said Saxons coach Stacey Ward. “As a group, they generally play a lot better when they play loose.”
Semifinals
NC stormed River Ridge 15-5, 15-7 and LC blitzed Columbia River 15-2, 15-11.
NC scored the first five and the final six points of its semi. River Ridge, which hadn’t dropped a game in four previous tourney matches, never led against NC.
NC befuddled the Hawks by hitting away from 5-11 junior Jameka Stevens. Wilson and Van Engelen pounded and tipped at will.
“They played the best I’ve ever seen them play,” Stevens said of NC. “I think that was kind of a championship game, in my mind.”
LC scored 11 consecutive points in the first game for a 14-1 lead. The Chieftains, 1991 state champs, led the second game 8-4 and 10-8 before the Tigers rallied with four straight points.
Quarterfinals
Sweeps were the story for LC over Ferris, NC over Puyallup and River Ridge over Prairie.
Ferris led LC 9-7 in the first game before the Tigers began a 20-2 streak that ended with a 12-3 second-game lead. Carlin Oeljen served eight straight for the Tigers in the second game.
“It seemed like the last few weeks when we needed to get it done, we did,” Ward said. “‘Today was just bad karma, I guess.”
There was no bad karma in the quarterfinals for NC, which scored the final seven points of its match to erase a 10-8 Puyallup lead, or River Ridge, which trailed Prairie 9-6 in the first game and 10-8 in the second before winning both.
Columbia River, which never dropped a game on Friday, outlasted Bethel 15-12, 16-18, 15-7 in the other quarterfinal. Columbia River led the second game 14-12 and 16-15 before faltering.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo