Glacier Peak volleyball’s long climb to state

SNOHOMISH — When the Glacier Peak Grizzlies volleyball team takes the court at 11:45 a.m. today against Auburn Mountainview in the opening round of the Class 3A state volleyball tournament, it would be tough to fault a few people for taking a moment to look back on just what it took to get there.

Head coach Chris Pratt, and seniors Taylor Lichfield and Taylor Rasmussen have been there for the whole process. When Glacier Peak High School opened four years ago and the team didn’t win a match the entire season all three were there. Currently, they are experiencing the best of times that the volleyball program has had to offer, but they were also there for the worst of times.

The process of building the program into a state contender has taken four years and has had its ups and downs. Pratt, the former head coach at Woodinville High School, seems almost relieved that his team has finally taken the next step.

It’s not hard to understand why. In Pratt’s first year on the job, his team went winless. As Rasmussen recalls, to think of where the team is now as opposed to where it was then is like night and day.

“Freshman year, if you would have told us four years later that we would be going to state I would have laughed,” Rasmussen said.

It wasn’t easy for the team to get to where they are and it was a challenge for Pratt. Starting from scratch at Glacier Peak wasn’t the same as when Pratt took over at Woodinville.

“Starting a program is not quite the same as taking over for someone,” Pratt said. “You are starting from scratch. It’s kind of like, I have told people this before, it’s kind of like cooking. When you are an experienced cook you can take the ingredients and kind of throw things together and I’m not quite there yet, but the experience at Woodinville certainly helped to know how to put things together and make the best out of what you’ve got.”

Patience became a virtue for Pratt.

“I think the most important thing for me was setting some goals for myself and being patient,” Pratt said. “Because the first two years, it didn’t seem like we were making the progress that I would have liked. If you had asked me four years ago, I would have thought that it would have been more progressive and I would have been able to see the growth as I went. And for the first two years, I didn’t see any growth, maybe there was, but not enough to make me feel like I was heading in the right direction.”

With the team’s struggles in Pratt’s first two years on the job, he dealt with the doubts.

“There was some doubters when I first got here, like, ‘Maybe he doesn’t really know what he is doing,’” Pratt said. “Because if you took a look at our record, I would have to say that I didn’t know much at all. That was the hardest, staying the course and believing in the direction I wanted to take.”

Going winless in his first season on the job still seems to have an impact on Pratt.

“I never would have thought I would have gone 0-for,” Pratt said. “I thought I knew enough about volleyball that I could get these kids to play together. So we had some chemistry things that we had to work on.”

Improving on the chemistry is one of the things that Lichfield and Rasmussen said helped the team get to where they are this season.

“One part that really helped us this year was that we did not have any team chemistry problems,” Lichfield said.

“Yeah, we love each other. We love each other as a team and we support each other,” Rasmussen added.

“That has not been the case from previous years,” Lichfield said.

In Pratt’s second season, the Grizzlies improved, but still finished the season 3-13.

“Unfortunately at the beginning of our program, the experience was all about losing,” Pratt said. “And so trying to change that culture of accepting the losing the first two years was really awkward because at the time the 3A division was so small everyone was making the playoffs and my kids wanted the season to be over. They didn’t want to be there. The first year that we played you could just tell that their heart wasn’t into it.”

The success that some of the other sports programs at Glacier Peak were having didn’t make it any easier on Pratt or the girls.

“Yeah, just ask the kids, not so much me because I am off campus, but for the girls it was like, ‘Oh the volleyball team had a match last night, how did you guys do? Oh let me guess, you lost.’ That’s what they dealt with. So they were the stepchild for the first two years. Yeah, to have so many teams have success right out of the gate definitely put a lot more pressure on them.”

But last year, it started to turn. Instead of the Grizzlies, who finished 7-10 in 2010, automatically qualifying for the district tournament, they had to win their way in, which they did. Pratt said it was a huge step for his program.

“Last year, I think, was the big turning point,” Pratt said. “It definitely had to be the match against Lynnwood. We split with Everett and we started beating teams that we hadn’t beat the year before. We put ourselves in a position that if we win at home against Lynnwood, we are in (districts). So now we have gone from the first two years where you automatically qualify for playoffs and you just feel kind of strange being there because you don’t feel like you deserve it to, oh snot, now we have to qualify to make it and we can.

“So I think the girls finally realized, ‘Hey we can do this, we can play at this level,’ ” Pratt added.

Lichfield and Rasmussen agreed with their coach that beating Lynnwood was a stepping stone for the program.

“We hit the ground running this year because of that win,” Lichfield said.

“We were able to not only prove to other people, but prove to ourselves that we are as good as our coach says we are and as good as we know we can be,” Rasmussen added.

Pratt said that in competition, sometimes winning is all the justification that you need.

“Well I think in athletics we want to justify all the training with some kind of result,” Pratt said. “In athletics, it is a competition and they keep score. We are trying to win and so is the other team.”

That success carried over into this season, where the Grizzlies finished above .500 for the first time in the school’s history and handed state ranked Meadowdale its only loss of the season.

In the district tournament, Glacier Peak won its opening round match over Shorewood and took the first set over Meadowdale in the district semifinal. The Mavericks came back to defeat the Grizzlies, but Glacier Peak didn’t give up, winning the remainder of its district games to advance to the school’s first-ever state tournament.

“I said, ‘Just because we lost to Meadowdale doesn’t mean that we have lost our chance,’” Pratt said. “‘Now we just have to do it the hard way. We have to come up through the loser’s bracket.’”

The Grizzlies did just that, they faced a Lynnwood team that was coming off a loss in the district championship match to Meadowdale in a winner-to-state/loser out match. The Grizzlies fell behind 2-0 and rallied to win the match.

“How they came back against Lynnwood down 2-0, I have no idea,” Pratt said. “It was just one of those things where both teams wanted it really bad. I know Lynnwood was coming off of a disappointing loss and I was hoping that we would be able to jump on them emotionally and they took it to us right out of the gate.”

For the Grizzlies, the added drama just makes the story all the more compelling.

“It’s a great Cinderella story,” Pratt said.

Rasmussen acknowledged that coming back from two sets down against Lynnwood to get into state adds another twist, but that doesn’t mean that is how she wanted to do it.

“We would never want to take the long road to get to where we want to be,” she said.

There is still unfinished business for the Grizzlies. Does the team that has worked so hard to become a contender believe that now that they are there that they can make some noise?

“I hope so,” Pratt said. “We’ve talked about it, we said, ‘Let’s not just go there and be happy just to get there.’ We set a goal to get to state, we did it.

“We immediately set a new goal that we want to win a match and prove that we deserve to be there.”

And if the Grizzlies get a win, who knows?

“I think if they get a win under their belt,” Pratt said. “I think if they can get past that initial nervousness, I wouldn’t count them out of coming home with some hardware.”

Winning a trophy at the state tournament just four years after opening a new school and starting a program that went winless in its first season — Pratt couldn’t think of a better ending to the season.

“The best,” Pratt said. “It would put a smile on my face that would probably be there for a couple of days, I’m sure of that.”

Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on twitter @aaronlommers and contact him at aaronlommers@gmail.com.