Samantha Green didn't have any idea what her team's overall record was, but all that matters is that her CSAS Lady Patriots won their opening-round match of the District 5-A tournament on Monday at Silverdale and will face top-seeded Grace on Tuesday in the semifinals.
The Lady Patriots beat the Copper Basin Lady Cougars on Monday, needing less than an hour to advance as CSAS won by scores of 25-11, 25-16 and 25-8.
Both teams entered tournament play with losing records and nobody wants to remember that stuff in a situation like that, but the Lady Patriots played well enough to win on Monday and that was good enough to satisfy Green, who was all smiles once the match ended.
"I'm pleasantly surprised as we played pretty well today," she said following Monday's match.
"It's been an up and down season for us, but we played as a team today and they did what they were supposed to do. We've had problems serving this year, but we had 25 aces today and that was great.
"All I know is that we live to play another day. We lost twice to Grace during the regular season, but we gave them a pretty good match, so hopefully we can play well tomorrow. We all know that will be a tough assignment," she added.
The first set may have been the closest of the three as the score was tied six times in the first eight points.
A kill from Autumn Richardson allowed the Lady Patriots to knot the score for the last time at 8-8 before Alex Hollis took charge from the service line, serving six straight aces and nine straight points as CSAS suddenly had the upper hand at 17-8.
The second set wasn't much better for the Lady Cougars as five straight service points at the start allowed CSAS to grab a 5-0 lead.
Three straight aces from Renee Schebler allowed the Lady Patriots to extend the lead to 14-6. CSAS made a series of hitting errors, but their overall play was more than good enough to win the second set as MyKayla Hampton's kill sealed the deal with the 25th point.
Alma Justice, who had four kills for the Lady Patriots, had two at the start of the third set as CSAS quickly built a 7-1 lead.
Megan Pool had six straight service points while Maggie Lee came through with five more a minute later as the lead quickly stretched to 13-2.
The difference was 16-6 when Schebler recorded five of her team-high nine aces and the match came to an end shortly after on a Lady Cougar hitting error.
Copper Basin coach Daren Waters certainly doesn't like losing, but he feels good about the future of his team's program.
"I thought we started out hot and played pretty well in the first set, but we have a really young team and things tend to fall apart when we make a mistake. We only have two seniors and one junior on this team with the rest being sophomores and freshmen. We also had two eighth graders who played today, so I'm looking forward to the future," he said with a positive tone.
"It's all about our inexperience right now, but I feel like we had a better team than we showed today," he added.
While the season ends for Copper Basin, CSAS will be back for the second day on Tuesday as they face Grace at 5:30. Second-seeded Boyd-Buchanan then faces Silverdale in the other semifinal at 7 with the two winners meeting at 6 on Thursday for the championship.
(email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)