Sandpoint Volleyball Club kicks off season with win

| January 29, 2008 8:00 PM

SPOKANE — The Sandpoint Volleyball Club kicked off the 2008 season with the U16 Black team winning the Spokane Challenge this weekend in Spokane. The 16-team tournament was held at East Valley High School.

The U16s, the defending U16 Evergreen Regional Champions were seeded second in the tournament. The locals cruised through pool play defeating the Walla Walla VBC U16s 25-8, 25-9, River City VBC 25-10, 25-5 and Pullman Volleyball Club 25-10, 25-6. In the first round of the playoffs the U16s defeated Northern Lights VBC 25-7, 25-9 and then followed that up with a 25-11, 25-14 win over Sideout VBC U15s setting up the finals with the top seed, Sideout U16.

Game one was close, tied at 11 when Sandpoint went on a 7-1 run to separate themselves from Sideout and finished off game one with a 25-16 win. In game two they fell behind early at 8-3, but rallied to tie the game at 11 and eventually won the championship with a 25-19 win.

Coach Jack Dyck was very happy with play of the entire team.

"This was truly a team win. We were very solid fundamentally. We served tough, passed terrific and our setting and attacking were very solid," Dyck said. "Maddy Emmer and Allison Halladay performed very well in the middle, which was a big lift since this position was a bit of a question mark for us going into the tournament. We will not miss a beat in this position."

Dyck added that he was mildly surprised with how well the team served and passed.

"We are having Alissa serve this year (last year she was Libero) and she, as well as our entire team, served very consistently tough," he said. "With our lack of size, that is critical to our success. The other key is staying in system so our attackers can get a swing as often as possible. Our primary passers (Allissa, Piper, Spencer and Christina) were on the entire tournament. I think we must have passed at 2.5 - 2.7 over the entire tournament.

"Our pin players (Christina Johnson, Kortney James, Sierra Pancho and Piper Wahlin) were exceptional the entire tournament. In fact, Piper had a two ice cream day."