Colville draws familiar foe

Chalk it up to the strangeness of the state tournament that two schools on polar opposites of the state are meeting for the third consecutive year.

This time, they’ll get it over with early.

Ninth-ranked Colville (18-6), the second seed out of the Great Northern League, will meet second-ranked and undefeated Woodland, a short drive from Portland, Ore., at 9 a.m. today in the first round of the State 2A volleyball tournament at the Yakima SunDome.

Woodland returns most of last year’s state tournament championship team, including 2003 2A player of the year Jamie Richards.

“We are right there,” Colville head coach Missy Bennett said. “We are the only team that gave them a match in their whole season last year, and we have them in the first round.”

In last year’s quarterfinals, Colville led Woodland 2-1 and 24-19 in the fourth game before losing control of the match. The Indians went on to place seventh

“They graduated like two players,” Bennett said. “They’re returning the state 2A player of the year and they’ve only lost one game to 25 all year. Unfortunately, we aren’t going to be able to surprise them again.”

Colville defeated Woodland in the pool play portion of the 2002 tournament.

This year’s Indians squad, Bennett’s fourth consecutive state qualifier, had its share of change during the season.

They returned all-league outside hitters Nikki Bardwell and Whitney Loan, but Loan was moved to shore up the middle. Colville also needed half the season to decide on a setter, finally placing the position squarely on the shoulders of freshman Jordan Emmil.

“That’s worried us all along,” Bennett said of having a freshman hold down such an important spot. “That’s an awful lot of pressure to put on a kid, but we haven’t had someone carry the load like Jordan has. She’s real level-headed and just really mentally steady.”

Pullman advanced first out the GNL, and the fifth-ranked Greyhounds (22-5) open at 2:15 p.m. against Ridgefield, which was defeated twice by Woodland in the regular season. Pullman finished fourth in last year’s tournament.

State B

Curlew will make its first trip to the tournament at Eastern Washington University, sneaking in as the fourth seed from the District 7 tournament.

“We’ve had a real tough year in terms of people coming in and out and some deaths in families,” Curlew coach Bonnie Grumbach said. “It’s not until the end of the year that we had the full squad clicking together.”

Curlew (17-4) starts five sophomores and a senior, but the Cougars aren’t new to state tournament play.

“They’ve gone to state two years in softball, they played as eighth-graders,” Grumbach said. “That’s helped to carry them through. The mental toughness is there.”

Tenth-ranked Curlew’s initial tourney bid is sweeter after a couple of tough postseason exits.

“The last couple of years we’ve had good teams, also, but come tournament time, we seem to lay down,” Grumbach said. “This is the first time this team has played its best ball at the tournament.”

Curlew’s tournament begins at 1:30 p.m. today against eighth-ranked Manson, winners of the North Central Washington league. Third-ranked Davenport is the other local team on Curlew’s side of the bracket. The Gorillas (18-9), who won the District 7 tourney, take on Evergreen Lutheran at 11:45 a.m. Davenport is the highest-ranked team in the bottom half of the bracket.

In the upper half, No. 5 Almira/Coulee-Hartline (15-7) opens at 10 a.m. against the first-place team out of the SeaTac Conference, Summit of Seattle. Second-ranked Garfield-Palouse (17-0), the top seed out of District 9, opens at 11:45 a.m. against another local team, No. 9 Lind-Ritzville (19-10). If Gar-Pal wins its first two matches, the Vikings could run into top-ranked Riverside Christian of Yakima, the defending champs, in the semifinals.

State 1A

Colfax (16-4) returns as a favorite in the 1A tournament in Yakima, which they have dominated, making the championship match three of the last four years.

Tenth-ranked Royal draws the second-ranked Bulldogs in the first round at 9 a.m. Colfax finished sixth in this year’s Spokane Crossover Classic, beating Colville and North Central in the process.

Seventh-ranked Freeman (8-9), the second team out of the Northeast A, will take on third-ranked Liberty Bell, winners of the Caribou Trail League.