Stanwood volleyball remains undefeated in league play

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, October 22, 2025

STANWOOD — After building up a 2-0 lead against Snohomish on Tuesday, Stanwood volleyball held a 19-14 lead in the third set before getting outscored 11-2 over the next 13 points, in small part due to their own errors. Letting an opportunity to shut the door pass them by, Stanwood knew it needed to refocus entering the fourth set.

“Definitely that we need to cover, and we need to keep the energy,” junior Whitney Longspaugh said about the conversation among her teammates entering the fourth set. “We need to play as a team because we were kind of more separated in that set. It was more of an individual game.”

With Stanwood regrouped and Snohomish given new life, each side struggled to pull ahead of the other at first, alternating points from 3-3 to 8-8 until Snohomish went up 11-8 with two kills and an ace. Stanwood rattled off six straight points to take a 14-11 lead, but Snohomish reeled it back in to tie it once again 14-14, then 15-15.

Stanwood coach Megan Amundson felt her team got too tentative in the third set, and she didn’t want that to repeat. Maintaining an aggressive mindset, the Spartans (9-1, 7-0 league) picked up the next six points in part from an ace from Longspaugh, a block from sophomore Lettie Millenaar and a kill from junior Harper Neyens en route to a 25-22 set victory, sealing a 3-1 win (25-19, 25-15, 21-25, 25-22) over the Panthers (7-6, 5-3).

“We got pretty tentative in the third,” Amundson said. “And a team like this (Snohomish) is going to take tentative and roll with it. So we had to put a little bit more pressure on them, not only from the service line, but when we were out of system swinging, and I think that’s one of the adjustments that they made well in the fourth.”

Longspaugh (nine digs, two aces) had a game-high 18 kills, while Neyens (10 kills, 10 digs) and senior Cambrielle Brown (11 kills, nine digs, seven aces) chipped in to the offensive effort. Senior Addison Bowie stuffed the stat sheet with 40 assists, seven digs, five kills and three blocks, while sophomore Kylee Brown led the team with 14 digs. Snohomish was led by seniors Heidi Chambers (15 kills, 14 digs) and Sawyer Mahler (eight kills, seven digs) in the loss.

It took a full team effort from Stanwood to pull a win out and remain undefeated in league play, and a big key was staying above the waves of momentum and bringing the same attitude regardless of the outcome in each point.

“You can have energy celebrating when you do a good thing, but it’s, are you having energy celebrating when a bad thing happens,” Brown said. “Are you talking on the court when the play is happening, and talking about what’s open, where you’re going next? Who’s running what? And we were lacking some of those essential elements there, but we just talked about it. ‘We need to do this, this and this,’ and then we went out and executed it pretty well.”

The Spartans took an early lead in the first set playing a relatively clean game, not handing Snohomish any points while Longspaugh scored four straight points for Stanwood to build up a 9-4 lead. The Panthers whittled the lead back within two points to make it 17-15 before Neyens had a run of her own, getting kills on four of the next five points to help the Spartans secure a 25-19 win.

Stanwood kept things rolling in the second, with a pair of aces from Brown making it 4-1 early. The outside hitter later bookended a four-point run with kills to put the Spartans ahead 13-7, and her teammates slowly stretched the lead before settling at a 25-15 win.

“Our goal this week was to be consistent and controlled,” Brown said. “I think we were really controlling the match, really attacking the defense and staying really consistent and calm on our side.”

With Snohomish’s back against the walls, the visitors jumped out to leads of 6-3 and 10-7 with a series of timely blocks and kills, doing a better job getting into spots to receive Stanwood’s attacks. The Spartans fought back to tie it 13-13 before pulling ahead 19-14 with a couple more kills from Longspaugh and Brown as well as an ace from Bowie, but a series of errors down the stretch allowed the Panthers to pull even again before taking advantage with a couple aces and well-placed kills to win 25-21.

“They clearly wanted to go through the middle, and their middles were effective,” Amundson said. “So it was (on) us to make an adjustment to that, but cheers to them for finding that hole in us.”

After addressing their energy between sets, Stanwood turned an 11-8 deficit into a 14-11 lead with Longspaugh, Brown and Bowie taking turns picking up points. Three straight errors turned it back into a 14-14 tie, but after another surge put the Spartans ahead 21-15, they held off one last push to take a 25-22 win, closing it out with a kill from Bowie after a great dig from Snohomish kept the play alive.

With two league games remaining, Stanwood sits 1.5 games ahead of second-place Monroe, who they face to end the regular season on Nov. 3. In a tight Wesco North 3A/2A division, the Spartans don’t plan to sit on their laurels despite not losing a league game yet this season.

“Start strong, finish strong,” Longspaugh said. “We’re definitely going to keep hitting out-of-system balls, which I think is one of our strengths. … We’re going to keep blocking low and tight, and getting out to the pin, taking those hitters that we know are out there, and hopefully beat everybody else.”