YAKIMA — The No. 5 Adna volleyball team found itself on the wrong end of a blitzing in its quarterfinal matchup against No. 4 Colfax, falling in three sets, 25-20, 25-13, 25-23 on Thursday.
“They are very good,” head coach Wendie Dotson said. “We just want to play one point at a time, and be down on defense, which we were a little slow at. They run a quick offense. But we knew that coming in. They haven’t lost a set for quite awhile.”
Brooklyn Loose dished out 10 assists and logged a pair of digs, an ace, and a block. Gaby Guard had eight assists of her own, a dig, and a plock. Parker Feist had six digs and four aces.
But going up against a tall Colfax front line, the Pirates were on the back foot in a hurry, falling behind 16-6 as everything started to go wrong at one.
“We dug ourselves in a hole, we weren’t passing very well, they were all on the 10-foot line,” Dotson said. “It was very hard to run a quick offense so the blockers didn’t have time to get out there. That was our goal, to play a quicker game, but to do that you have to have better passing.”
A couple of timeouts got Adna’s composure back together and the Pirates ended the set strong, but simply ran out of points to give up.
But any momentum gained from how the first set finished disappeared for Adna in a blowout of a second set.
The Pirates started to match the Bulldogs in the third, even taking a late lead, but saw it disappear with Colfax coming back to win and seal the deal.
“Their attitudes were way better that last game,” Dotson said. “Even when we were a little bit down, they still had a good attitude and didn’t feel the pressure, I don’t think.”
Kendall Humphrey had nine kills to lead the team, along with six digs. Danika Hallon had eight kills and 10 digs, sharing the team lead on the latter front with Charissa Schiermann. Miriam Wilson posted three blocks and two kills.
Adna will get a bright-and-early Central 2B clash Friday, playing for its season against No. 9 Toutle Lake. It’ll be the fourth matchup between the Ducks and Pirates this season; Adna swept Toutle in September, lost in four in October, and five days ago beat them in the third-place match at the District 4 tournament.
