The West Seattle High School Girls Volleyball team started divisional play last week at the Cleveland Eagles. The Wildcat Girls had the match in hand most of the evening taking game one, 25-10 and game two, 25-12.
Kaileah Bladwin, and Katie Menday both started and played significant minutes in the second game helping West Seattle put a four point run together on Menday's serve to finish it. Cleveland did not let the Lady Wildcats get away in the third game and kept it close from the beginning. Strong serving by Spenser Nickell and a late substitution by coach Gayle Mower to bring in Lauren Freidenberg from the bench set up the winning points. West Seattle swept Cleveland with a 25-21 third game win. Many players got on the stat board in this match: Julia Freidenberg got 4 kills on the evening. L. Freidenberg, Gail Considine put down 3 kills each. Gina Wittman, and Cassandra Sailiai each got 2 kills. This team thrives on its defense as well: Nickell picked up 3 blocks and Co-Captains Karly Sapp and Considine each got one. Sailiai had 6 digs, while Wittman and Nickell each recorded 3 digs.
Friday's match was against neighborhood rival, the Seahawks from Chief Sealth High School. West Seattle came out on fire and despite strong play from Sealth led the entire game. After trading points at the beginning of the game, West Seattle put together a 4 pt run on J. Freidenberg's serve forcing a Sealth time-out. The teams then traded points with West Seattle holding a 4 to 6 point lead until Wittman served the last three points in succession and L. Freidenberg set to her sister for the final kill putting an exclamation point on the game. Final score: 25-18. The second game was sandwiched by two Sailiai five-point service runs at the beginning and end. The rest of the points were evenly fought and game two was a West Seattle win. Lauren Minkler started game three serving the Wildcats to an early lead that they never relinquished. Every time Sealth showed signs of fighting back, West Seattle was able to shut them down and finally took the game comfortably, finishing the second sweep of the week in just under an hour.
