GILL COLESEUM - CORVALIS  Our regional tournament got off to a strong start with wins in our first two matches.  We faced 12's Blues in our first match.  Allison broke open a close first game with six straight serves as we took game one 25-18.  In the second game we led throughout only to see 12's Blues keep coming back.  We pulled out a close victory 25-22 with no missed serves.

 In game two, we faced OJVA.  Game one was too close for comfort and ended up tied 22.  Rachel had five tip winners and Anjola had three hits to help secure a 25-23 win.  In game two, we built an 8-1 lead and cruised to a 25-16 victory.  Anjola, Bailee, and Callie had nice service runs to secure the victory.  For our first two matches, we connected on 82 of 91 serves for a 90 percent service percentage.  In addition, our serve receive and passing were strong. Our final match in pool play was against #2 NW Excel.  This was one of those matches where we just couldn't get things going.  We fell behind early in both games before losing 25-17 and 25-16.  We finished morning pool play with a 2-1 record and secured our place among the top eight in the region.

In our first match in the championship bracket we faced an old nemesis, PVC.  This is a team we've played close a couple of times this season, but could never break through.  In the first game, we played some of our best volleyball of the season.  The game was close throughout (15-13) until we pulled away for a 25-18 victory.  Bailee served really well, connecting on 7 of 8.  The second game was a heartbreaker.  We built an early 9-1 lead only to see PVC come back.  With the matched tied at 15, PVC kicked things into high gear and pulled out a 25-18 victory.  In game three, PVC's serving was on fire.  After an early 3-3 tie, PVC cruised to a 15-4 win.  Our fifth match was played against Nike NW Juniors.  This was probably our easiest victory all season.  Callie stared us off with six straight service points, followed by five from Rachel, and seven by Emiko.  We won the match 25-5.  With the victory, we ended up playing West Valley Juniors 12 in the 5th/6th place game.  After failing behind 15-9, we ran out of steam and ended up losing 25-17.  

Overall, it was another strong tournament.  We finished the season ranked sixth in the entire region!  Our serving was the best it had been all season (169 out of 188) at 90 percent.  Nine players had service percentages above 86 percent! Our setters did a great job of getting balls to our hitters who also had a great day.  In addition, we continue to get better and better on our defense and serve receive.  

We have one tournament left this season in two weeks.  We've been close to winning tournaments all season.  Let's do it this time and close out this season as tournament champions.