By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Mt. Edgecumbe and Sitka High volleyball teams dueled again Tuesday evening, with Sitka carving out a tight 3-2 victory.
The teams play again next Tuesday and Wednesday for the regional championship title.
Set scores were, Sitla-Edgecumbe, 25-11, 16-25, 19-25, 25-20, and 15-13. With such wild swinging between the sets, both Sitka coach Zaide Allen and Edgecumbe coach Mike Mahoney called the evening a “roller coaster.”
Mt. Edgecumbe coach Mahoney said “it was very tight.” With the entire event coming down to 2 points in the fifth set, Mahoney said that such close runs come down to “a mistake here, a mistake there.”
In this match, he noted that “Sitka was 2 points better than us last night on that 3-D chess.”
Despite the loss, Mahoney added that he’s “really happy with how we played… as a team we served really well last night.”
The coach praised Brody Wysocki and Mia Anderson as standout players in the evening. He also commented that “blocking from Vernae (Raymoth) and Shayna (Warnke-Green) was fantastic.”
Sitka Wolves’ Jocelyn Brady, left, and Chloe Morrison, right, play against Mt. Edgecumbe October 22, at Mt. Edgecumbe High School as libero Zaeda Dumag looks on in the background. At the pivotal moment in Tuesday’s
match, Dumag set the ball and Brady scored for the win. (Sentinel photo by James Poulson)
MEHS struggled last night on hitting and passing, but Mahoney said “resilience is a strong point of our team.”
Both local teams have played before and know each other, leading to a game of constant adjustment and readjustment, Mahoney said.
Edgecumbe’s coach said the Wolves are “a fun team to play, they’re a nice group of girls.”
On the Sitka side, coach Allen said “my team came together when they needed to… everyone was fighting really hard.” Allen noted that in the fourth set, Edgecumbe was in the lead, but Sitka “came back and won it.”
With a defense honed against Hutchison and Ketchikan teams last week, coach Allen said, “this defense is really good, and they pick up things that impress me.”
Overall, Allen believed that “this was a different level” of volleyball. From defense to serving, Allen said, the Wolves had found their footing.
In the fifth set, with the score Sitka 14, Edgecumbe 13, Zaeda Dumag set the ball, and Jocelyn Brady made the point, ending the match in Sitka’s favor.
Allen said “in that moment they knew that they needed to not let the ball drop, and keep fighting, and in that moment they did that and they got a set up and did what they needed to do.”
“In those final moments in the fifth set, my team came together,” she said.
The local teams will have a final opportunity to square off on Tuesday and Wednesday. Unlike previous matches however, this competition is for the Region V title, and a chance to compete in the state tournament.
On Tuesday, the match will begin at 7 p.m. at Sitka High. The Wednesday match also begins at 7 p.m., but this time the location will be Edgecumbe. On Wednesday at 5:30, there will also be a serving and passing competition.
All games will be best of five, and if the result by the end of play on Wednesday is a tie, a final showdown will be 7 p.m. Thursday, at Sitka High.
