LACEY — About every two or three minutes, on average, fans in attendance at Monday night’s Northwest Christian High School volleyball game against Shoreline Christian heard the same two words from the Wolverines sideline.
“Good serve!”
Many in the stands probably chalked it up to the coaches and teammates just encouraging one another.
The reality is that the vast majority of those “Good serve” yells were right on the money.
Northwest Christian piled up 16 service aces in a 3-1 home victory against Shoreline Christian, a match in which the Wolverines backdoor swept the Chargers (22-25, 25-14, 25-15, 25-16). Their performance from the service line was a stark contrast to their jamboree they hosted on Saturday.
“We really started to focus. During the jamboree on Saturday, we weren’t super focused with our serving,” said junior co-captain Ashlynn Hutchings, who was responsible for four of those 16 aces against the Chargers. “We established a goal before the game when the other team was warming up. How many blocks are we going to achieve? How many aces do we want to get? We were really focused on achieving our goals.”
In addition to their 16 aces, the Wolverines recorded seven blocks against a tall Chargers front row.
None of these goals looked very possible to achieve early in the first set, as Shoreline Christian jumped out to a 5-0 lead, seemingly growing more energetic and faster with each point during that run. Northwest Christian eventually kicked it into gear and got right back into the set with a 6-0 run of its own. The front row of junior co-captain Addy Hentges and sophomore Tenlee Nonn were disruptive, getting fingertips on plenty of attacks.
After the early seesawing, neither team could separate itself from the other until the very end of the opening set. Shoreline Christian led at one point 12-9, and the Wolverines sprung six unanswered to take their own three-point lead.
Northwest Christian led 22-19 following a kill by Nonn, but the Chargers stormed back with a 6-0 run to steal the first set 25-22.
“Going into this match, we talked about how it doesn’t count for our season and it’s a non-league game. We told them to try to relax,” Northwest Christian co-head coach Sarah Barnard said. “We definitely started with the jitters.”
Following a first set in which the Wolverines only knocked in one service ace, they caught fire from the service line in the second set. Hutchings and Nonn each sent a serve to the hardwood early, and Hentges hurt the Chargers with two in a row as part of a 7-0 run midway through the frame. Hentges finished off Shoreline Christian in the second set with a pair of kills to cap off a 25-14 thumping.
“We moved into the next set definitely feeling more confident and comfortable and moving around the court a lot better,” Barnard said.
Northwest Christian and Shoreline Christian were evenly matched in the first half of set three, with six ties and three lead changes. Hentges slammed three aces in a 5-0 run, but the Wolverines’ lead was still slim at 12-10.
The Wolverines pulled away using a 13-5 run, sparked by a kill by senior Rileigh Frost and an ace by Hutchings. Freshman setter Jess Collins even dumped the ball over the net for a kill, thrilling her teammates, who chanted, “She’s a freshman.”
The story of the fourth set was similar to that of the previous, although Northwest Christian maintained its advantage for the majority of the stanza. Senior Mimi Espinoza came alive with a kill and a pair of aces as the Wolverines took a 12-6 lead. But Shoreline Christian pushed the home team to the brink and capitalized on attack errors.
With an 18-16 fourth-set lead and the finish line in sight, Northwest Christian sprinted past its opponent with a 7-0 run to win the match. In that burst, Espinoza and Hutchings each logged an ace, and Hentges concluded her strong day with two kills to bring her total to a team-high 14. The co-captain also recorded five aces, four digs, one assist and one block.
“We love Addy. She’s very even keel. She’s always been that way for us,” Barnard said of Hentges. “The way she sees the court is really important for us. On a team like this that’s so scrappy and can move to the ball so quickly, her ability to drive the ball down is so important.”
Collins impressed at the setter position with 25 assists, six digs, one kill and one ace, while Frost added five kills, 10 digs and a block on the outside. Nonn flashed her power in the middle with a team-best five blocks to go with four kills.
This Northwest Christian team doesn’t boast the experience that it has in the past when it won 19 games last season or placed sixth in the 1B state tournament two years ago. Above all else, veteran leaders like Hutchings and Hentges have emphasized team bonding and culture building with their teammates in practice, which has quickly paid off.
“We really need to focus on gelling and connecting as a team on and off the court more than anything,” Hutchings said. “We really started to take our team bonding seriously and our practices extra seriously when it comes to working together, communicating, and growing as teammates and friends.”
Northwest Christian (1-0) will get another chance to grow its chemistry Tuesday night when it hosts Raymond-South Bend in the second game of a season-opening back-to-back.
