Pre-Regional Tournament
April 15, 2007 @ Kelso, WA

Asics went undefeated Sunday in a tune up for the Regional Tournament. Asics, 54-18 for the year, played the minimum amount of games and finished 6-0 for the day.

Our cross pool had us playing Southern Oregon Green 25-12, 25-15; Salem Red 25-15, 26-24; and Cowlitz Blue 25-8, 25-17. We won three matches in bracket play against North Portland Black 25-12, 25-16; Cowlitz Red 25-15, 25-18; and Clark Co. 25-7, 25-16 for the championship.

We had a chance to work on a few things that has been giving us trouble all year. Emmy Dolan served 96% with 4 aces. Emmy has been working on her serve at practice every week and she is starting to have an impact. Jenna DeRosier and Alesha Shultz served 100%, Jenna had 12 aces out of 43 attempts and Alesha was 2 of 6.

Rebecca Haight was unstoppable, hitting a staggering .549 with only 5 errors for the day. KC Schmit also hit .390 and that is high for a full day of playing. They have been our go-to people all year and this is why. Helping them to be successful are our middles, Kate Becket, Emmy and Jenna, who keep the middle on the other side of the net keyed on them. When Bec and KC get to hit with one blocker this is what happens. Our middles also combined for 11 blocks.

Captain Heather Shulke had 105 assists and our right-side hitter, Andrea DeRosier was there with help with a 60% assist average. Marnee Clancy does a great job playing defense but has trouble at serve receive. She has worked hard at practice and this weekend she passed a 2.03. Danielle Gilchrist did not play this weekend, she was out with a HCSI. We hope she will be good to go for Regional.

This has been a great year, keep up the good work.

Yakima Jamboree
POWER DIVISION I-A
March 17-18, 2007 @ Yakima, WA

Wow! What a great weekend for this team! We finished second to a very good Columbia Juniors team in the championship match, losing 26-28 and 22-25. This was a battle of two great teams playing their hearts out! This is the best we have played all year, especially on Sunday. We were on fire ... digging, hitting and blocking. It was absolutely amazing to watch and even better to play. We played as a cohesive team, where everyone made key contributions which brought much success.

We started our first pool off with Webfoot 15’s Gold (25-17; 25-23), Power Surge 16’s (25-14; 25-19) and then a very familiar foe, Puyallup Jrs. (19-25; 23-25). Losing this match to Puyallup put us second in our pool going into the next pool. We started off the next pool as the number 3 seed, which matched us up with that #1 team from that pool, Sandpoint, from Idaho. We beat them in three (25-10; 19-25; 15-11). The next morning started off pretty slow, with a three game match against Bridgetown Navy, beating them in three as well (18-25; 27-25; 15-7). Then we faced the 4th seed in our pool, West Valley, and managed to let that one get away (25-18; 22-25; 15-11). However, we still managed to eke out a first place pool finish since we had beaten the other two teams in a head-to-head match.

And this is where the after-burners kicked in! We played a very good Wahine Black team beating them 25-13 and 25-16. This was a great start to bracket play and we were cookin’!! We kept that momentum up into the next match against NCWVBC, getting the victory in three games (25-19; 23-25; 15-5). We have played this team two other times this year, and have not had much success, but this weekend was different. We got to avenge those losses from earlier. The championship match was amazing … a disappointing loss … but this team played their hearts out and we couldn’t ask for anything more! A second place finish brought home another tournament T-Shirt and a lot of pride in a job well done!

It would be unfair to single out individual stand-outs for this weekend, since it was truly a TEAM effort. Everyone made key contributions throughout the weekend. Great defense, fantastic serves, amazing hitting and awesome setting … we played with heart and compassion and desire. We hope to put all this work ethic into our computer and bring our “A” game to the court every match. It was fun to watch and great to play!

Thanks parents … you were great fans! Cheering us on and giving us moral support! You are appreciated. And to the TEAM … way to go … we are proud of you!!!

Power League - March
GOLD DIVISION
March 3, 2007 @ Longview, WA

The Cowlitz 16’s Asics spent the weekend at home for the March Power League and it was well worth it. Moving into the Gold Division for the first time, we started out in seventh place and ended up in 5th. This was actually a very good gain for us in that our play was rather like a roller coaster ride, with its ups and downs. However, the “ups” outweighed the “downs” and allowed us to advance. Our day started out with Columbia Jrs. from the Tri-Cities, where they defeated us 20-25 and 12-25. With a two hour break, we started off strong against the number two seed, Mac Jrs., and fell to them (24-26; 18-25). We immediately saw Rose City, beating them in three (25-17; 21-25; 15-10). This allowed us to finish third in our pool, moving up two seeds from the beginning of the day. Power League play puts the most emphasis on the next match, the most important one of the day, where we needed to win in order to stay in the Gold Division. We rose to the occasion beating a very good Webfoot Gold team—25-19; 21-25; 16-14. With this win under our belts, it was a matter of determining 5th and 6th place teams with one game to 25. With Rose City winning their crossover match, they were our next opponent … again! It was a great come-from-behind win of 26-24. Way to go Asics!!

Top players for the weekend include Heather Shulke, who led in many categories. As a setter, she had 14 kills, hitting .364. She also added 57 assists, 9 ace serves and 10 digs. Rebecca Haight was our kill leader with 42, hitting .277. She also had 7 ace serves and 29 digs. KC Schmit added 31 kills, 5 ace serves and 17 digs. Emmy Dolan and Andrea DeRosier combined for 14 kills. Marnee Clancy, libero, had 40 great digs for the day along with a serve receive average of 1.86. As a team, we continue to struggle with our serving accuracy, missing 35 serves for the day. We definitely need to improve in this area of our game, but our offense and defense are coming together.

We travel to Seattle again next weekend for a two-day tournament, the Spring Classic. We are looking to improve our game each time we step on the court. When we do it right, it is great to watch and to play! Keep working at it Asics, it is paying off!!

Pro Image Invite
February 25, 2007 @ Longview

The Cowlitz 16’s Asics team participated in the Pro Image Invitational Tournament in the 18’s Division, looking to step up their game. With the level of play a notch up, the team picked up their pace and went undefeated to win the tournament. The first match of the day was against Starlings, winning 25-17 and 25-18. The next two opponents were Camas Ohana Black (25-14; 25-17) and then PDX (25-8; 25-6). After a lunch break and reffing assignment, they met their best competition of the day in the Cowlitz 18’s Blue, defeating them in two (25-19; 25-22). This was a fun match to play because there is always that inner-club rivalry and good, hard competition. The last match of the day was against Angels, beating them in two as well (25-17; 25-15).

There are several top players for the tournament, in that many people gave key contributions in their positions. Kate Beckett led the team in hitting efficiency with a .750 with her 12 kills and no errors. KC Schmit hit .366 with 38 kills and Rebecca Haight added 27 kills, hitting .281. Heather Shulke and Danielle Gilchrist led the team in assists with 53 and 26 assists respectively. Heather also added to the offense with 8 ace serves and 93% average. Danielle only served 89%, but she had 15 out of 38 of her serves were aces. That’s almost half … that’s amazing. Way to go Danielle!!

Alesha Schulz also contributed to our team serving with 85% and 8 ace serves, along with 14 digs and a perfect 3.00 serve receive average. Our serve receive as a team improved this tournament with the help of Alesha and Heather (2.50), Marnee Clancy (1.91) and Rebecca Haight (1.91).

With only a small war for sizes, we left with our purple championship T-Shirts, compliments of Pro Image and were home by 4:30!! Way to go Cowlitz 16’s Asics. With 3 tournament championships behind them, the Asics team is getting ready for a hard-fought battle in the Gold Division of the next Power League. Look for good things to come!!

President's Day Tournament
February 17-19, 2007 @ Bellevue, WA

The Cowlitz 16’s Asics team overcame adversity, injury and district basketball games to win the Silver Division of the President’s Day weekend tournament in Bellevue. With Andrea DeRosier home with mono and Brittany Weiand taking care of some family issues, we were short handed for the weekend. Oh yeah, Kate Beckett was playing in her district basketball game on Saturday. So, we were down to eight players for the weekend. Kate arrived on Sunday to help out and on Monday, KC Schmit was hampered by a shoulder injury and was unable to continue. So, we were back to eight again! However, these eight did an outstanding job of making the adjustments needed and competing at a high level. We missed getting into the Gold Division by 2 points. We did, however, win the Silver Division Championship, finishing 9th overall out of 56 teams.

We are very proud of these kids and the accomplishments they made on the court this weekend. There were several who played a new position on this team and made great contributions. Heather Shulke, our libero, became one of our starting setters. She did a fantastic job of running the offense with 63 assists along with her 2.94 serve receive average. Her partner in crime, Danielle Gilchrist, played the best tournament of the year. We decided that her grandparents needed to come all the time ... we believe she was there to impress them, and she did just that. Danielle had 72 assists and the talk and leadership we’ve been trying to cultivate finally bloomed. Jenna DeRosier, normally a middle blocker, filled in for KC on Monday and did a fantastic job. She had 25 kills for the weekend. Emmy Dolan had a great weekend at the net, with 10 solo blocks and 4 assist blocks. She owned the net in our last match on Monday. Marnee Clancy stepped up her game as she moved into the libero position. She, also, had a career weekend in her defensive efforts with 22 digs and a serve receive average of 1.76. She led our back row defense with her talk and her hustle. Our best player, by far, this weekend was Rebecca Haight. She excelled in all areas, including leadership, desire and passion. She had a fantastic weekend with 65 kills, 2.10 serve receive average, 10 ace serves with an 88% efficiency and she served more than anyone on the team … 84! She provides a lot of offense for us with her serve, her back row hitting and her front row hitting. She is the complete package and it was fun to watch her play! Way to go Becca! We would like to extend a special thank you to Kelly DeRosier, Ron Beckett and Joe Shulke for keeping stats for us. It is greatly appreciated and the kids really like to see how they are doing.

We would also like to thank all the parents who come and support their kids in the rain, snow and sometimes, sunshine! Your kids may not know it now, but when they grow old and grey like us, they will appreciate all you’ve done for them and how you’ve supported them in the game they love to play. You are making a difference in their lives…

Power League - February
SILVER DIVISION
February 4, 2007 @ Not Available

The 16’s Asics team had a great weekend of play, winning the Silver Division and advancing to the Gold Division next month. We will be moving into the “land of giants”, but we’re going to give it our best efforts. In pool play, we won our first two matches beating Nike Air Max (25-14; 25-13) and North Clackamas (25-11; 25-20). We were then matched up against Nike Air Elite, who we beat at the last tournament. They were highly motivated to avenge the loss. They attacked quickly, and we fell 15-25 in the first game and then again 23-25. Finishing second in our pool matched us up with the first place team from the opposing pool, PVC White. Although we didn’t put our best match on the court, we were able to hang on to the victory (25-23; 25-21). So of course, the championship match was set up again against Nike Air Elite. Play was back and forth until 14-16, when a collision with each other caused an injury to the Nike setter, stopping the match for nearly 45 minutes while paramedics were called and the player taken care of. We moved the match to a vacant court and continued play. Nike regrouped and won that game 22-25. We battled back to take the second game 25-23. The third game had Nike leading at the switch, 8-6, however, with some great serving by Jenna DeRosier, we were able to come back and win the match, 13-15, giving us the Silver Division Championship. It was a great, competitive match, with both teams putting out great effort. It was nice to come away with the championship, but either way, it was a great match.

We live by the serve, and die by the serve. Tough serving brought us back in matches as well as took us out of some. Rebecca Haight and Danielle Gilchrist led the team with 6 ace serves apiece with Danielle serving 96% and Jenna DeRosier serving 92%. However, as a team, we missed 36 serves … way too many! We will continue to work at improving this piece of our game. Rebecca also added 33 kills to the mix along with teammate KC Schmit, who contributed 30 kills. Jenna DeRosier had our best hitting efficiency, hitting .333 with her 15 kills. Heather Shulke was a defensive standout with 38 digs and a serve receive average 2.01. Kate Beckett is improving her game at the net with 5 kills and Marnee Clancy came into the championship game to make some much needed perfect serve-receive passes—two in a row.

Winning the Silver Division awarded us some “silver” stocking hats, that the girls modeled with some trepidation, but with pride. Next month will give us newer and bigger challenges that we look forward to. Great job 16’s Asics … keep up the good work and keep looking to improve your level of play. You will go far!

Awards N' More Classic
January 28, 2007 @ Mt Solo Middle School - Longview, WA

The Cowlitz 16’s Asics team is definitely heading in the right direction as we continue to work on improving our level of play. Our only loss this weekend was to Camas Ohana Black (who knocked us down to the Silver Division in the Qualifier Tournament) in the championship match. We beat them fairly easily in the first game, 25-19, but they came back the second game with a vengeance and beat us 18-25. That led to a very exciting show-down for a third game. We were down 3-10 at one point, before the serving of Jenna DeRosier brought us back to a tie at 10 points. The battle continued, with some great rallies back and forth and points being shared. At 14-14, Danielle Gilchrist came in to serve us to the lead at 15, but Camas came back to win the next 3 points. There were huge momentum swings throughout the match, from game-to-game and point-to-point. It was a lot of fun, but disappointing as well, in that we felt that a lot of the points that Camas received were unearned. Mistakes on our side of the net cost us a championship.

However, we continue to improve in all stat areas, especially on our team hitting efficiency (.209). This number has been improving with each tournament we play. Jenna DeRosier led all hitters with 13 kills, hitting .333 followed by Rebecca Haight with 37 kills (.244). KC Schmit added 22 kills (.182).

Our hitters are amazing when our setters locate the ball at the net to give them all their options. This continues to be a struggle for them, but they are improving. The more repetitions they get, the better we will be become. Providing energy and leadership is Brittany Weiand who had 51 assists followed by Danielle Gilchrist with 26 assists. Danielle has also added to our team offense with her very accurate serves and especially in clutch times this weekend.

Our defense was led by Heather Shulke with 12 digs with a team leading 1.88 serve receive. Alesha Shultz also had a 1.88 serve receive average.

This team is willing to work hard and have learned to make a lot of noise … finally! As we celebrate our successes on the court, our play continues to elevate. We need to make sure we remember what a key “momentum” has in this great game of volleyball.

Power League Qualifier
January 6, 2007 @ Not Available

Cowlitz 16's Asics qualified for 9th place out of 86 teams in the 16 year old and under division this weekend. Asics went undefeated in pool play beating Webfoot Silver 25-19, 25-18; Sun Cat 28-26, 25-17; No Dinx 25-20, 25-13. We lost our challenge match with the number 9 seed Camas Ohana 17-25, 20-25. Camas served us tough and they kept everything in play. In our last match of the day we beat North Clackamas 25-21, 25-23 to keep our # 9 seed for next month's Power League. We should be seeded # 1 in the Silver division.

We have a lot of work ahead of us to get in the top of the Gold division. We need to learn how to take care of the ball when we have control of it. As a team, serving 81%, hitting efficiency .188, serve errors 40, and 25 serve receive errors are not good enough to be in the Gold Division.

We had great improvement from our middles this tournament. Emmy Dolan, Kate Beckett and Jenna DeRosier had 13 ace serves with a 94% average!!!! Serving was a problem for them at our last tournament and they worked hard on making it better at our last practice. KC Schmit was our top hitter (.278) with only 8 hitting errors. Brittany Weiand (36 assists) and Danielle Gilchrist (31 assists) are doing a better job at setting. Heather Shulke, Libero, was awesome in serve receive this weekend. Learning to pass over-head on a free ball has helped our offense. Rebecca Haight hit .271 in her first tournament of the year.

Next week we are at the MLK Tourney in The Seattle area.

Pre-Qualifier Tournament
December 30, 2006 @ Longview, WA

Cowlitz 16’s Asics finished second out of 14 teams at the Pre-Qualifier tournament held here in Longview. Playing in a 3-team pool, we crossed pools to play Bridgetown Orange (25-12; 25-10), Reach (25-16; 26-24) and Power Surge 16’s (25-21; 25-12). Finishing 6-0 in pool play, we advanced to bracket play seeded 2^nd. We started with a familiar foe in Reach (25-14; 25-22). We then faced Bridgetown Navy in the semi-final match, beating them in two (25-21; 25-21). In the final match, a very good 15-year-old team, Power Surge, gave us all we could handle. (25-22; 26-28; 8-15) In the second game of this match, we had a 6 point deficit while our opponent was stalled at 24. Andrea DeRosier served us back into this game, tying the score at 24. The Surge came back to win the game and then the match. Finishing second in the tournament with only 3 practices under our belts, none of which had our entire team in attendance, was a great accomplishment. Everyone got the opportunity to show their potential and try different positions. It was exciting to see the abilities of these athletes and we’re looking forward to see how much they grow and improve in their game. Top hitters for the tournament were KC Schmit (hitting .233 with 33 kills), Andrea DeRosier (hitting .104 with 28 kills) and Jenna DeRosier (hitting .333 with 17 kills). Our defensive people had an outstanding day, especially in the serving area. Marnee Clancy (13 aces), Alesha Shultz (11 aces) and Andrea DeRosier (11 aces). Our middles added their style of defense with their blocking … Jenna DeRosier (8 blocks), Emmy Dolan (7 blocks) and Kate Beckett (4 blocks). Brittany Weiand did the majority of setting (55 assists) and she was joined by teammate, Danielle Gilchrist (23 asssists). Heather Shulke, our libero, did a fantastic job of digging and she had her share of setting duties adding 15 assists. We were without outside hitter Rebecca Haight this weekend due to a family funeral. We’re looking forward to seeing her in action next weekend.