The West Seattle High School Women's volleyball team continued their winning ways in last Wednesday night's match against the Rainier Beach Vikings.

The lady Wildcats came out strong led by co-captains Karly Sapp and Gail Considine who helped Lauren Freidenberg break an early 3-3 tie serving the score up to 7-3 including an ace serve, a block for a point from Sapp, and a kill from Considine.

From that point on the Vikings scored very few points of their own. West Seattle took the first game 25-11, the second 25-12 and despite sitting half their starters for most of the third game won game three 25-22. West Seattle's main starting 6 are all 5'8 and taller except Osborne who platoons with the taller Gina Wittman.

They lost very few points at the net winning most joust situations and killing any overpasses with extreme prejudice. Kaileah Baldwin earned playing time throughout most of the 3rd game scoring 2 kills, 2 digs, and an ace. The Freidenberg connection got off a number of shots as Lauren fed Julia who got the majority of her kills in the third game. L. Freidenberg had 18 assists and 4 aces. Considine scored 7 kills and 3 aces. J. Freidenberg scored 7 kills and 5 digs. Sapp had 4 kills and 2 blocks.

Friday, the Wildcats hosted the Ingraham Rams who came into the match with a league record of 2-1. After giving up an initial lead, West Seattle put together points behind serving runs of evening starter Matalone and L. Freidenberg taking them to a 13-8 lead. Ingraham matches team height better than the other league teams West Seattle has played and was able to hold their own against the Wildcat front line getting blocks and kills of their own, but West Seattle out-scored them 2-1 the rest of the game and finished with a 25-15 win.

The Rams came out hot in game two running off 4 points before West Seattle got back into the game. The Lady Wildcats got to 6-7, but were unable to regain the lead or put together any extended service runs losing game two, 18-25.

In game three, West Seattle finally got their extended run behind the serving of Matalone through an Ingraham time-out, to a 9-2 lead. Though the Rams attempted a late come back scoring five in a row, L. Freidenberg shut them down serving the final three points to another 25-15 victory.

Again in game four West Seattle came out thumping, this time to a 9-3 lead and had things pretty well in hand until Ingraham went on a run of their own scoring 8 in a row to tie the game 15-15. The game was tied at 16, 17, and 18, until J. Freidenberg served three points in a row, first to tie at 19 and then to lead 21-19. The Rams tied it at 22. The crowd was cheering loudly.

Ingraham got the next two points and it looked like the West Seattle coach was trying to call their final time-out. The referee interpreted this as arguing a call and penalized the bench awarding the 25th point to the Rams along with game 4.

A fifth game tiebreaker goes to 15 points. West Seattle scored the first two. The Rams scored 5 and trailing 4-7 the Wildcats called time-out. The West Seattle girls won the first point after the time-out and J. Freidenberg served 4 more winners seesawing the lead back to their side, 9-7. Ingraham tied the game 9-9. The next point rallied back and fourth crossing the net 5 or 6 times. Both teams played carefully and the kills slowed down. J. Freidenberg finally got up for a great spike, but Ingraham dug it out and set up their own spike, which West Seattle returned over the net but dropped out.

Then West Seattle tied it at 10. Osborne served an ace and West Seattle scored the next point prompting Ingraham to call time-out. The Rams got the next four points before giving up the serve to the Wildcats at 13-14. West Seattle won the next point to tie it 14-14, but before the next serve, it was pointed out that they had served out of rotation. The Wildcats were docked the point they had scored and one point was awarded to Ingraham to give them the game 13-15.

Though the referee declined to clarify that for me after the match, I later asked a friend of mine with over 15 years of referee experience and she said that's the way she'd have called it. L. Freidenberg had 35 assists. J. Freidenberg had 17 kills, 6 blocks and 8 digs. Considine scored 12 kills, had 5 blocks, 4 aces and an assist of her own. Sapp had 7 kills and 6 blocks. Matalone had 7 kills, 5 digs and 4 aces.

Wednesday, October 4th, West Seattle hosts Nathan Hale before working their way once more through the league beginning with Cleveland on the 6th also at home. The Wildcats will hope to spoil Nathan Hale's unbeaten league record to regain a share of the league lead.