Bruins seek first Trico volleyball win

Columbia was scheduled to reach the midway point of its 10-match Trico schedule on Oct. 10 when Seton Catholic played in White Salmon. Coach Heidi Shultz said one goal vs. Seton, as well as in the second half of the season, will be to balance out the Bruin offense — specifically moving around the ball sets.

The Stevenson and King’s Way matches exposed Columbia’s reliance on one facet of its offensive arsenal. “I think we were trying to rely too much on one hitter,” Shultz said of the loss to Stevenson, especially after the Bruins had split the first two sets vs. the Bulldogs. “We need to have a more balanced attack.

“We did that a little bit better against King’s Way, but we swung a little bit the other way. We were counting on our middle against Stevenson and then cut out the middle and went always to the outside [vs. King’s Way].”

Shultz said the predictability of the attacks enabled Stevenson (especially) to start anticipating where the sets were going to go and being able to send two blockers to that area of the net.

“You don’t want to be too predictable, and I think that was what was happening,” she added.

Josie Dickey stepped up against King’s Way, filling in for libero Juliet Perez. “[Josie] had a really great game,” Shultz said. “Most of her passes were right up to the setter. She passed almost half of our serve receives.”

Dickey had 17 digs and no errors. Sara Miller contributed eight kills and limited her overall errors to four.

“Sara Miller also probably had her best game,” Shultz said of the sophomore.

Against Stevenson, Claire Hayes brought the Bruins back from a large deficit in the third set with three aces. “She served pretty well,” Shultz said. “It was kind of her first time serving a lot in a game this season.”

Jessica Polkinghorn had 12 kills against Stevenson and Hayes added seven. Perez had 20 digs for the Bruins, and Bella Hamilton had 18 assists and 12 digs.

Four of the six Trico teams qualify for district, where the format calls for first-round cross-over matches against the four teams from the Evergreen Conference.

“We’re going to need to start winning,” Shultz said. “The second time around we’re just going to have to get some wins if we want to go to district.

“We can beat them. We talk about that a lot. Looking at each other and saying, ‘We can do this’," Shultz said. “You just keep on believing in each other when you’re out there on the court because volleyball is kind of streaky. We’ve had some good comebacks this year, we’ve just got a little too far behind.”