Building up a two-set lead, the Napavine volleyball team probably didn’t get the stress-free win it wanted to, but ended up with a five-set home win over Raymond Wednesday, 25-14, 25-10, 22-25, 26-28, 15-9.
The Tigers were firing on all cylinders in the first two sets, leading to two dominant wins, but made a lot of third ball errors in the third and fourth sets, dropping tight sets and giving the Seagulls all the momentum heading into the deciding fifth set.
In the fifth, the Tigers fell behind 5-1, but managed to side out quickly and earn some points on serving runs to take home the victory.
“The girls had to turn it on and dig deep to win that game,” Tigers coach Monica Dailey said. “They didn't want to go down that way, they wanted to win, they turned it up and fought hard.”
Jessie McCoy missed just one of her 22 serves and added 20 assists and three aces, fellow setter Avery Schutz added 15 assists, earning the praise of their coach for their distribution.
Grace Gall had another all-around strong game, with seven aces and 17 digs in the back row. Emily Kang added three aces and a team-high 33 digs with 100% serving.
On the attack, Keira O’Neill had a team-high 16 kills with three block kills, and Morgan Hamilton had 11 kills with 21 digs.
“I kept telling the girls, ‘you can't let them have a little flame to build’, they’ll use it and grow from it and they did,” Dailey said. “My girls started panicking, trying to be too aggressive, when they just needed to settle down and do what they knew what to do.”
The Tigers play their third match in three days Thursday at home against Winlock.
