Tahoma volleyball tops Lake Stevens to win 4A volleyball state title
Rankings are debatable. Results are not.
After being ranked No. 1 in the state for most of the season, but dropping to No. 3 last week, Tahoma High School lived up to the original billing by winning its first Class 4A state championship Saturday, topping No. 2 Lake Stevens in four sets (21-25, 25-21, 25-22, 28-26) in the Yakima Valley SunDome.
“I think this solidified that we are as good as I think we knew we always were,” said Sara Russell, in her second season as co-head coach of the program with Maria Bahlenhorst.
It was a battle between two teams in uncharted waters. Neither had been to the championship match before. Chey Jones, Tahoma’s 6-foot-4 hammer, made sure the Bears went home with the title, piling up 24 kills, 13 digs and three blocks.
“It feels so good,” Jones said. “All of this feels like a dream come true. It hasn’t even hit me completely yet that we just won state. It’s insane. This is what we’ve been working for for months and months and we made it, and we deserve it so much.”
McKenne Peters keyed the defense with 38 digs, while Sydney Thompson chipped in seven blocks and three kills. Kennedy Kibby had a nice overall match with 22 assists, 13 digs and two aces.
The Bears felt they had a little something to prove after dropping their first in-state match of the season at district, 3-0 to Emerald Ridge.
“That loss was the best thing that happened to us,” Bahlenhorst said.
Neither Tahoma nor Lake Stevens had been to the championship match before.
They had played each other, in the championship match of the Linda Sheridan Classic, and Tahoma won that one 2-1. This had a whole different feel, of course.
Tahoma got there with wins over Issaquah, No. 9 Puyallup and top-ranked Graham-Kapowsin, which had been the hottest team in the state after winning the West Central/Southwest Bi-District tournament the weekend before.
But after giving up the first set to GK, 26-24, the Bears swept the next three sets to earn their chance at the title.
Lake Stevens, which had lost in the opening round the year before, had little trouble in the first two rounds with 3-0 wins over Camas and Curtis. Auburn Riverside presented a bigger challenge in the semis and took the opening set, 27-25, but the Vikings were up to the task and won the next three.
Auburn Riverside (24-10), which won back-to-back titles in 2016-17 but went 0-2 here last season, wound up fourth after losing the consolation final to Graham-Kapowsin 3-1. G-K (20-6) took home a best-ever third-place trophy.
It was quite a 4A tournament overall for teams from the West Central District as they started a perfect 6-0.
Emerald Ridge, which stumbled in Friday’s quarterfinals against Auburn Riverside, wound up eighth – and eliminated SPSL rival Curtis along the way. Puyallup just missed a trophy.
The Vikings, which came in ranked No. 9, seemed headed for hardware despite the quarterfinal loss to Tahoma. They opened up a 2-0 lead over No. 7 North Creek of Bothell in Saturday’s elimination round and wound up losing in five.
It was a roller coaster ride for Graham-Kapowsin. After winning the West Central/Southwest Bi-District championship, the Eagles vaulted from No. 10 to No. 1 in the rankings. For much of the tournament, they played like it, but couldn’t finish.
G-K’s biggest win was a five-setter against North Creek, which had a sizeable lead in the fifth before the Eagles stormed back. That put the Eagles in the semis and they wound up 3-1 in the tournament overall, leaving coach Loni Parks in tears.
“It’s just been an emotional ride with these girls,” she said.
Parks said her team didn’t feel the extra pressure of coming in ranked No. 1.
“I told the girls we had nothing to lose,” she said. “No one thought we would win league or district, except us. We had high expectations.”
And the Eagles, whose previous best finish was sixth in 2009, lived up to them overall.