Two years ago, it took first-year head coach Tiffany Alvarado and the W.F. West volleyball team 12 matches to pick up their second win of the season, a total with which they would ultimately finish the campaign.
This fall, the Bearcats haven’t even completed a full week of school and they’re already 2-0 — a first for the program under Alvarado and first since the shortened 2021 spring season. W.F. West, four days removed from rallying from down 2-0 to Hudson’s Bay to win in five sets, flashed dominance in its 3-1 win over 1A Elma Monday night.
“It’s a great start for us. We’re really just looking at one game at a time,” Alvarado said.
The Bearcats kicked off their second contest of the season in much more comfortable fashion than the first, as they edged out the Eagles 26-24 in an opening set that saw 11 ties and five lead changes, and neither team led by more than four points. Serving wasn’t perfect to start, but Jaden Jensen and Ariana Wheaton each picked up aces in the frame.
W.F. West ran away with the second set, leading wire to wire in a 25-13 win. Madelynn Panther got in on the action at the line with multiple aces in the second, and the Bearcats closed out the frame on a 10-3 run.
“We were communicating and we were putting the ball in play. A lot of our problems have just been our own errors,” Alvarado said of the second set. “That was our problem with Hudson’s Bay in our first two games. We just made too many serving errors and hitting errors. [Tonight], I think our serving errors were probably low, and as we pick it up, our hitting errors will start diminishing.”
Elma clawed back in the third, jumping in front 16-11 before W.F. West roared ahead thanks to an 8-2 run. But hitting errors caught up to the Bearcats, who gave up the final five points of the set to lose 25-22.
After a rollercoaster opener against Hudson's Bay, the Bearcats weren’t fazed by losing one set. But that match wasn’t the only teacher on resilience for the veteran squad. Throughout the offseason, Alvarado and her coaching staff focused on what she called the “mental aspect of volleyball” and responding to adversity. They even started a team book club where they read a book specifically about mental training for volleyball players.
“Where we’ve been weak in the last two years is falling apart mentally and not being able to be a cohesive unit out there,” Alvarado said. “Doing a lot more team building is going to be really helpful.”
It’s too early for Alvarado to call the Bearcats’ resilience a surefire strength after two contests, but the fourth set showed clear growth from a season ago. W.F. West immediately threw the third set in the waste bin and looked like a different team, communicating effectively and bouncing back time after time. In fact, the Bearcats never allowed three points in a row in the fourth, winning 25-14 to clinch the 3-1 victory.
Panther led the Bearcats with a dozen kills, and Paige Duncan’s 15 assists were a team best. W.F. West recorded 24 aces on the night, with Duncan providing five and Panther picking up four.
“They were looking really confident. They’re hungry. They’re ready to have a positive season, and they’ve been working hard for it,” Alvarado said of her team, which has gone 7-19 over the past two seasons. “They feel like their time is due, and they’re gonna work as hard as they can. If we’re gonna get beat, we’re gonna just get beat, not beat ourselves.”
The Bearcats are led by senior captains Wheaton and Aubrey Prigmore, who make up a group of eight seniors that includes Jensen, Vivy Witchey, Emily Stajduhuar, Kyleigh Connolly, Panther, and Amanda Linwood.
W.F. West will look to pick up its third straight win when it hits the road against Washougal Tuesday at 7 p.m.
