This season, it’s a different story for Cascade volleyball team

Published 9:59 pm Monday, October 13, 2014

For Kyleigh Johnson, Ashley Turcott and Tiara Huffaker, all seniors on the Cascade volleyball team, victories didn’t come easily in their first two years on varsity.

The Bruins won just three matches in each of the past two seasons.

This year has been a different — and much happier — story. The Bruins won their first four matches and stood alone in first place in Wesco 4A, above such highly regarded teams as Snohomish, Kamiak, Lake Stevens and Jackson.

Cascade is just over halfway through its season and the Bruins are 6-2, tied for second place with Kamiak behind Snohomish, which is 7-1.

“The atmosphere on the court is really happy when we’re winning and so energetic and exciting,” Johnson said. “We just play really well together.”

The Bruins opened the season with a win over Mariner, but it was their second victory of the year — a five-set win over Lake Stevens — that suggested to the girls and their first-year head coach, Maddie Benson, that this year would be different.

“After that first game against Mariner, I was kind of like, ‘OK, we’ve got something here,’” Benson said. “When they got that win against Lake Stevens, that’s when I told the girls, ‘This is it. We take every day one game at a time, but this is it. I see it happening.’ I haven’t seen 100 percent of that team back (in other matches), but there was something in Lake Stevens that just came out of them and it was unbelievable. It was amazing. They just played 100 percent as a team.”

Huffaker, an opposite and outside hitter, had the same feeling as her coach.

“When we played Lake Stevens we were like, ‘We might actually be pretty good this year,’” she said. “You could just tell it was different.”

After beating the Vikings, the Bruins defeated Jackson. They followed that with a sweep of Monroe to improve to 4-0.

“(The fourth win) was really big because in our past years — and we’ve been on varsity since our sophomore year — we’ve never had four wins (in a season),” Johnson said.

Much of the credit for the Bruins’ fast start belongs to Benson and the players, but Benson said she walked into a good situation thanks to former head coach Danielle Marks.

“Coach Marks did an awesome job building this program,” Benson said. “It wouldn’t be where it’s at right now and the talent wouldn’t be here (without her). She pretty much paved the path for me this year. As much as I would like to take the credit myself, we have a lot of returners from last year.”

Eight of the 12 players on the team were on varsity last season. The other four players played on the junior varsity, which Benson coached.

This is Benson’s third season coaching volleyball for her alma mater. She coached the freshman team two years ago and the JV last season before being hired as the varsity coach prior to this season.

That Benson, who graduated from Cascade in 2008, is a volleyball coach at all is somewhat surprising. She didn’t play competitively until her second year at Everett Community College. She played basketball in high school and was on a basketball scholarship at Everett CC when she caught the eye of the Trojans volleyball coach.

“After my freshman year the volleyball coach came up to me and was like, ‘Hey, do you play volleyball?’ And I actually said, ‘No, that’s a wussy sport that you don’t have to be athletic in,’” Benson said. “Biggest mistake of my life because she totally proved me wrong.”

Benson was offered a second scholarship that paid for her books, which was too good to pass up. The learning curve was steep for Benson because of her lack of experience, but she picked up the game quickly.

“I had to pick it up pretty quick,” she said, “otherwise there was going to be a sophomore at another college pounding the ball at my face.”

Benson saw volleyball in a unique way, which allowed her skills to develop rapidly.

“I’m a math major and that was the best part that I liked,” she said. “I could correlate volleyball to math. You have to be at this angle to get the ball to go here and here.”

One thing Benson had to learn on the fly this season was how to deal with adversity. After winning their first four matches, the Bruins lost back-to-back contests to Snohomish and Kamiak. For a team that wasn’t used to winning, two losses had the potential to derail what looked like a promising season.

After the setback to the Knights, Benson offered her players some perspective.

“I said, ‘How would you feel if you would have lost to Snohomish in Week 2 and then lost to Kamiak tonight,’” Benson said. “It would be a bummer, but a lot of them said it probably wouldn’t have hurt as bad. I said, ‘OK, you have to look at it like that. It’s a bummer. It’s not awesome, but we just turn around and we take it for what it’s worth, we learn from it and we come back.”

And come back they did.

The Bruins defeated Mount Vernon in five sets in their next match and swept Mariner this past Tuesday to improve to 6-2, doubling their win total of a year ago.

“I think that, even though they don’t realize it, they have more confidence in themselves,” Benson said. “I don’t know if it’s just that maturity level. They hold themselves a lot more accountable.”

Benson doesn’t teach at Cascade, so she doesn’t have the benefit of interacting with the students and staff the way other teachers do. But when she is on campus, the comments she’s heard from the staff about how her players conduct themselves in and out of the classroom have been glowing.

The wins are nice, Benson said, but hearing things like that about her players is the best reward of all.

“We could lose every game, but as long as they have a positive attitude and are great people, I’m happy,” Benson said.

Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.