Pool play competition was very close. We played well against O'Hana and Mt. Hood but couldn't get the jump on Inner City Jrs. It sure felt good to win in the tie breaker against Mt. Hood! Then in bracket play we battled to the very end against Salem as the scores indicated. Unfortunately, we couldn't get past one of Salem's very tough servers at the end of the tie breaker game, and lost a heart breaker. The entire team performed very well and even though we would have liked to finish a little higher in the standings, our Cowlitz 12's Blue players can hold their heads high and feel very proud of the strides they made throughout the season. During the last 3 weeks of the season they not only learned how to transition from base defense, but also worked on serving to areas. Not bad for a team that started at the bottom of the Silver Division, eh? And let's not forget we made our way into the Gold Division for April's power league! We may have sacrificed some points as we neared the end of our season because we added higher level skills into our game plan, but these girls have learned more about the game than most of the teams we played against and they will be better for it next year. It was SO EXCITING to watch our team successfully move from defense to offense and back again AND some players even accomplished hitting serving areas. Allison and Sharol did a major HIGH-5 after a couple of these wonderful events. During this season-ending tournament the girls put together all they had learned to make it a very competitive outing.

Click here to see the Final Word from 12 Blue Coaches

We will enter Regionals on April 28th in 2nd place, Silver Division, and would love to finish the season in 1st place! Hard to believe the season is coming to an end already. This group of young ladies have learned a tremendous amount about the game of volleyball and have come from the bottom of the 12's division to playing in the Gold Division. AWESOME. Go 12's Blue......

Even though the team came out of the first pool on Saturday in third place, they played hard and gave 100%. We had some close matches and only struggled when confronted with an opponent who could serve bullets.

On Sunday morning, we were placed in a 3-team pool and had to play the best 3 out of 5 games per match which is exhausting, and of course both matches (against Tri-City Flame and Oly-Extreme) went to tie-breakers. Once again we were nudged out of a higher finish and came away with 3rd place. The first game in our bracket match against Kent Jrs. went into overtime, and we ended up losing 29-31 (wow, what a well fought battle that was), then we won 25-20, but dropped the tie-breaker 11-15.

This was a great opportunity for all of the girls to get a lot of playing time to improve their skills and team work with everyone contributing at different opportunities. Alisha Bruce-Thiery did a wonderful job setting and saving the ball (she even got to be a front row hitter for a change); Alicia Londo attacked the ball at the net, blocked and served well while cheering her teammates on; Cayden Gaston didn't get much of a chance to rest the whole tourney but came into every game with a wonderful uplifting attitude and helped the team with her defensive play; Katie Sarysz adjusted well from playing just front row to playing all around and when forced to change her serving technique, she didn't give up but went out onto the court and made the adjustment which isn't easy to do; Rebecca Haight stepped up to the plate and took on the job of middle blocker without ever having played that position and came through with flying colors - she also provided some much needed points from her serves; Paige Kehrli made some excellent diving saves which kept us in the game, and she improved her game with playing time in front and back row; Marnee Clancy made a college-type dig on a hard-driving ball (Allison admits it would have been a difficult ball for even Allison to get to) - Marnee also served some great low hard-driven serves for aces; Kari Toms has beautiful setting hands and got some opportunities to prove it with sets that resulted in assists.

As is true with this game, if you can serve and serve receive well, you pretty much have it made. We're going to keep working on improving those two skills to be ready for the GOLD DIVISION at power league in April.

Terrific job, team. Keep up the good work and great attitudes.

Obviously everyone played well to contribute to our success. The credits go to Cayden Gaston (incredible diving saves, staying low on defense, good serves and consistently calling the ball); Katie Sarysz (fabulous serving percentage, improving talking and passing); Alisha Bruce-Thiery (numerous saves out of the net, great sets and tons of good serves); Paige Kehrli (kill serves, some nice saves and terrific enthusiasm); Karee Lappe (strong front row play, better passing and strings of killer serves); Marnee Clancy (some perfect passes and low/hard serving); Kari Toms (very good at adjusting from setting to defense, improved passing); Alicia Londo and Rebecca Haight (both passed a huge amount of target passes making it easy for our setter to set them up for front row attacks, served LOTS of points and hit well at the net). We've gone from a few pass-set-hit combos a tournament to several every game and we're seeing a large number of great saves, yeah TEAM !!

We've now had a taste of what if feels like to play better, meet goals and enjoy winning matches, not just a few games. Keep up the good work, BLUE! Our next tourney is March power league where we will continue to improve.