Sweet Home’s volleyball team won its first league title in years Monday night, with a 3-2 win over Sisters, last year’s state champion.
“I don’t think it’s sunk in,” said Head Coach Mary Hutchins, who took over the program three years ago and curried young talent to the point that the Huskies were able Monday to withstand some withering competition from the Outlaws. The scores tell the story: 25-23, 22-25, 22-25, 25-23 and 15-13.
“I feel like, in our normal fashion, we do not give up,” Hutchins said after the match. “Sisters is a really tough team. They really dominated. They have lots of experience and they are really balanced. They work really hard.
“We keep fighting and we were able to come out on top today.”
In front of a packed house full of fans from both schools, the Huskies looked a little jittery early on, but managed to stay ahead of the visitors until Sisters evened the score in the first game and ran up a four-point lead before the Huskies recovered and edged ahead down the stretch.
They fell behind in similar fashion in the second and third games, and were unable to recover, though they came close, before battling back in the fourth.
“We were down quite a bit both games,” sophomore Bailee Hartsook said. “We just pushed through it and never gave up as a team. I’m just super proud of everyone.”
Statistics were unavailable before The New Era went to press, but Hutchins noted that her entire team got on the court against one of the best teams in the state and “everybody contributed in some way.”
“One of our strategies was to move them around defensively, to have them see different hitters,” she said. “We tried to serve tough and we missed some serves. We tried to pull them out of their perimeter defense.”
They also played well at the net, particularly blocking, she said.
Hutchins said Sweet Home’s focus on winning a league championship sharpened throughout the season.
“As season wore on, we realized we could be league champions,” she said. “I’m just so proud of them.”
Sand senior Sunhee Bitter, the team’s main setter, said she was “very hopeful” about winning the title when the season started.
“Last year we were so close, but we never finished it,” she said. The Huskies lost two close league matches to Sisters and ended up with a tough draw in the playoffs that gave them an early exit at Crook County.
“This year we have a good group of girls,” Bitter said. “We’re so competitive. We never want to stop fighting. That’s what got us here.”
Hutchins observed that the Sisters match “honestly, could have been a state championship match” in terms of its intensity and rigor.
The Huskies are 11-0 in the Oregon West Conference and 18-2 overall going into their final regular-season match, when they host Newport at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17. The Cubs are 2-9 in league and 5-13 overall. It goes without saying that this is a chance for the Huskies to finish with a clean slate.
“It’s Senior Night on Wednesday,” Hutchins said. “We’re in a position we’ve never been in.”
“It’s nice,” Hartsook said. “I’m really happy and excited we pushed through with it.”