Tournaments are Good Training

WAITSBURG - The W-P Lady Cards may have been overdue for a rest af­ter Saturday's invitational tournament in Waitsburg, but they accrued plenty of practice play by attending two tournaments in two days. "This kind of thing is good for them," said assis­tant coach Robbie Johnson. "This is what they'll face if they make it to a state tour­nament. You play all day, get up and do it again. They handled it really well."

W-P left Waitsburg at 4:30 a.m. on Friday morn­ing, heading for Yakima where they participated in the 32-team SunDome Vol­leyball Festival. The Festival takes place on eight courts in the Yakima Valley SunDome and provides teams the op­portunity to play against diverse competition.

W-P faltered in pool play, losing to Woodland 9-25, 4-25; Bear Creek 20-25, 17-25; and Columbia-White Salmon 12-25, 11-25. They bounced back during brack­et play, however beating Riverview 25-18, 25-22 and Seattle Academy in three sets (scores unknown), be­fore losing to Seton 24-26, 16-25. W-P placed 25th out of 32, overall.

Samantha Fedderson led play with 21 kills, 11 serving aces, 18 blocks and 41 digs. Paige Wood had 16 kills and 16 digs, and Jaidyn Brown provided 27 assists, served 9 aces, and had 13 digs and 13 kills. Enedina Fuentes had 13 kills, 6 aces and 22 digs; Caitlyn Jones had 14 digs, 10 aces; Caitlin Mohney had 17 digs, 11 aces.

After arriving home just after midnight Saturday morning, the team was back on the home court at 8:15 a.m., warming up for the W-P Invitational meet. Competing schools includ­ed: W-P, Touchet, Mac-Hi, Colfax JV, Dayton, Wa_ Hi JV, DeSales and St. John- Enidcott.

The W-P hosts started off strong in pool play with a two-set win over the Touchet Indians, with scores of 25- 20, 25-21. The initial win was followed by two three- set losses; one to Mac-Hi 13-15, 25-23, 6-15 and a second to Colfax JV 35- 15, 15-25, 4-15. The Lady Cards went on to lose their bracket match to Dayton who took the championship in a final game against St. John-Endicott.

Samantha Fedderson and Paige Wood led the hitters with18 and 12 kills, respec­tively. Jaidyn Brown fol­lowed with 8 kills, Enedina Fuentes and Caitlin Mohney with 2 each, and Caitlyn Jones with one. On offense Fedderson led with 32 digs, 5 blocks and 11 aces. Wood added 19 digs, 9 blocks and 2 aces. Brown served up 26 assists, 10 digs and aced 4 serves. Fuentes had 18 digs, 1 block and served up 6 aces; Jones had 7 digs and 8 aces and Mohney had 6 digs and 2 aces.

"Overall, I'm really hap­py with the two days," said Coach Angie Potts. The girls have figured out where they need to be on defense and how to play as a team. We still have work to do but they're becoming more consistent."

The Waitsburg School District would like to offer a special thanks to Inland Cel­lular who donated hospitality room food (special thanks to Gina Wilson for delivering), Service Alternatives for hos­pitality room supplies, Pepsi for hospitality room drinks, Cummins Athletic Supply who donated the champion­ship trophy and Blue Crystal for donating the champion­ship T-Shirts.

The first game of 2B league play will take place Thursday at Walla Walla Val­ley Academy.