Volleyball enters the deep end over past week

“They feel what winning feels like and they want to work really hard toward it”

By Than Acuff 

It’s getting real for the Crested Butte Titans volleyball team as they start league play and matches against stout non-league opponents. The Titans had three matches over four days last week with every one of them going to five games with Crested Butte winning one in thrilling fashion and dropping the other two tightly contested matches.

They opened last week with a league match at home against the Monte Vista Mustangs on Tuesday, September 23 showing what they’re capable of as they battled through all five games to take the win.

It was a barnburner from start to finish with the Mustangs and Titans trading off points and a handful of mistimed errors through the first game before kills from Mia O’Neil, Hailey Huresky and Maryn Pritchett helped pace the Titans to a 25-23 win.

The second game was nearly the same, certainly in intensity, from both teams. After going back and forth to start, the Titans built a slim advantage when Tessa Wirsing provided a near perfect set for O’Neil to hammer home for a 12-9 Crested Butte lead. The Titans continued to build to a five-point lead before the Mustangs called a timeout to regroup.

The break proved fortuitous for Monte Vista as they clawed back into the game and then were up 24-22 looking to seal the second game. But the Titans dug even deeper to win four of the next five points to win the second game 26-24.

Facing a match loss, Monte Vista came back to win the third game 25-21, but the Titans looked to seal it at the start of the fourth game when a service run from Haley Roberts had the Titans out front early. The Mustangs responded to tie the game 9-9 and then things unraveled for the Titans as Monte Vista won 14 of the next 17 points to take the fourth game 25-11 and force a fifth and final game.

 “A lot of teams plummet in the fourth game,” says coach Sheri Covey. “I had to change some things because they just weren’t executing well but it didn’t work out.”

After dropping two games in a row, the second one being especially hard, Titan teams of the past would often fold, but not the team this year. While O’Neil, Roberts and Huresky all came up with key kills, Monte Vista responded nearly every time, and the two teams were tied 11-11. Crested Butte took a 14-12 lead, one point away from the win, but the Mustangs tied it up 14-14 only to have Crested Butte bounce back as O’Neil recorded two kills down the stretch for the 16-14 win to take the match.

“Now we’ve grown some backbone,” says Covey. “That desire and motivation just wasn’t there before and now it is.”

“The win was huge for growing confidence and chemistry within our team,” adds O’Neil.

The very next day Crested Butte was on the road for their biggest challenge of the season thus far as they were slated to face Buena Vista who is sitting in second place in the league standings and ranked top 10 in the state in 2A. 

“When we walked in the gym it looked like David versus Goliath,” says Covey. “They’re just so big.”

Following a robust pre-match routine by Buena Vista complete with a light show introduction, the teams got down to business and while Buena Vista won the first game 25-17, it was harder than they probably expected. So much so that the Titans came back and won the second game 25-23 and then took the third game as well 25-17 with O’Neil hitting and Huresky and Pritchett coming up with several key blocks.

“We started to pound on them, and they couldn’t handle it,” says Covey. “Everyone was doing their job.”

Buena Vista would eventually recover to climb out of the hole and win the fourth and fifth games to take the match, but it was harder than they expected.

“We’ve been in the cellar of the league for so long I think teams think they’re just going to roll to a three-game win,” says Covey. “I think, in the end, we just got tired.”

“We played the best as a team we have all season, against a really offensive team,” says O’Neil.  

Crested Butte then closed out the week with a match in Telluride against the Miners, at their Homecoming, on Friday, September 26. This would prove to be another big test for the Titans and while road weary and battle fatigued from the past two five-game matches, the Titans won the opening game against Telluride 25-23.

But the Miners made an adjustment to slow down O’Neil, and it took the Titans a game to make the needed adjustments dropping the second game 25-8.

“They put a triple block against Mia and that just stumped us,” says Covey.  

Adjustments were implemented and the Titans looked elsewhere to generate some offense and while they lost the third game 25-21, Crested Butte came back and won the fourth game 25-23 to force a fifth and deciding game for the third match in a row.

“We adjusted our defense towards their big middle to get our offense hitting at them,” says O’Neil.

But fatigue set in one last time for the Titans and the Miners won the fifth game 15-11 to take the match. 

“They fought and fought and were just exhausted,” says Covey.

Still, winning one five-game match and taking two stout opponents to five games shows there’s something different about the Titans this season and they’re buying in.

“We’ve become more confident in our abilities as a team after taking some really competitive teams to five sets,” says O’Neil.

“They’ve got the fire, now I just need to coach them to get them where they want to go,” adds Covey. “They feel what winning feels like and they want to work really hard toward it.”

The Titans are back at home on Thursday, October 2 when they host Custer County at 5:30 p.m. They remain at home to host the top team in the league, Del Norte, on Tuesday, October 7 at 5:30 p.m.