The Centralia volleyball team had to maneuver around a few obstacles of its own making, but once the Tigers got out of their own way, there was little 1A Eatonville could do to stop them in a 27-25, 25-20, 25-11 sweep to open the season Tuesday.
“I thought all of the girls did a great job of coming together when they needed to,” Centralia coach Marti Smith said. “We talked about body language and they fixed that in a heartbeat. I’m not going to complain about a three-set win on Opening Day.”
The Tigers (1-0) gifted the Cruisers at least 20 of their 25 points in the first set, including 11 service errors. In the latter two sets, they limited the errors at the line to seven.
Mikaela Maratiza led the effort, with a perfect effort on serves and five aces — all in one 8-0 run in the second set — while Heaven Jacobson added three aces.
“We’ve got to clean up our side of the court if we’re going to win games,” Smith said. “We talked about that. We got off to a shaky start in the second set, but when Mikaela was serving, she really got us back in it. She and Heaven both did a nice job in that second chance of serving and creating a lot of opportunities for us.”
As the service game got cleaned up, the Tigers found their speed on offense, led by Lauren Wasson.
The senior outside hitter had five kills in the first set, including a massive swing at 25-25 to get the Tigers to set point, the four more in an 8-2 run in the second that swung a 9-3 deficit into an 11-11 tie.
Wasson finished the day with 14 kills, and added three aces in the final set.
“It was really great to see Lauren swinging the way that she can now,” Smith said. “She didn’t get a sophomore season because of her knee injury, and then her junior year she still wasn’t 100%. So it was so nice that in her senior season she can come out and be 100%.”
Makayla Chavez, playing in her first match back after taking her junior season off, added six kills.
At the back, senior libero Gracie Schofield led the way with 15 digs, while Jacobson added eight.
Things finally clicked for the Tigers in the third set, when they jumped out to a 7-2 lead on a host of Eatonville errors. One last Jacobson run at the service line got the gap out to 14 points, before Wasson fittingly ended it with one more kill.
“The third set, we just said, ‘We’re done, let’s get out of here,’” Smith said. “I thought our serving was a lot better. We definitely did the things we’d talked about, making them make the mistakes, so it was really nice to see us finish out the third set the way that we did.”
Centralia will be right back at it Wednesday, hosting Olympic.
