The Husky volleyball lost to third-place Sisters 25-16, 25-18 and 25-21 during Capital Conference playoffs on Thursday at Sisters.
On Tuesday last week, the fourth-place Huskies eliminated fifth-place Molalla 25-16, 25-17 and 25-18 at home.
Against Molalla, “we played really well,” Coach Heidi Nichol said. “We executed everything from our passing to our digging and our hitting. I think for us, that was the reward of all we’d been working for. That was a great game. We just really executed well, and we didn’t get stressed.”
Serving, Teresa Lewis was 13-14 with five aces. Katie Reynolds was 13-14 with three aces, and Nicky Emmert was 12-13 with five aces.
“All kinds of people contributed to our hitting,” Coach Nichol said. Lisa Brocard led hitting with 18-20, nine kills and four blocks.
Ashley Smith hit 13-13 with one kill. Susie Sieg hit 6-6 with two kills and two blocks. Ashley Horn hit 7-9 with four kills and five blocks.
Emmert and Lewis “did a great job of running our offense,” Coach Nichol said. “And the bench, they were so excited the whole game. They really kept the girls on the court all pumped up.”
At Sisters, the team is still trying to figure out what happened.
“We just didn’t look like we were ready to play,” Coach Nichol said. “We never did find a flow for the game. Hitting was off. We just didn’t play well.… Sisters played well. We can’t take anything away from that.”
Though Sisters played well, Coach Nichol said. Sisters had missed serves and unforced hitting errors that meant the Huskies could have done better.
Brocard hit 15-19 with eight kills and one block. Lewis hit 9-12 with two kills. Smith hit 12-17 with one kill.
“Nobody really stepped and got us aces,” Coach Nichol said. Lewis, Emmert and Reynolds all served 10-12. Emmert had one ace. Lewis had two aces. Those were the only aces notched by the Huskies, showing strong serve receive on Sisters’ part.
“It’s a bummer,” Coach Nichol said. “I think that one more game, I would have felt we had nearly reached our potential, especially after Molalla.… We’re definitely not disappointed with the entire season.”
The team had a great experience and was an especially fun group to work with, Coach Nichol said.
“We came in and we had trouble with the simplest of skills just because we didn’t have the experience,” Coach Nichol said. Though still making some young mistakes, the team improved tremendously since that point at the start of the season.