Lake Stevens volleyball wins first state title in dramatic fashion

Published 8:30 am Monday, November 24, 2025

At first, it looked like the same story.

Lake Stevens volleyball had lost just one set in its entire non-tournament schedule during the regular season, and swept every playoff matchup leading up to the 4A State Championship against Curtis at the Yakima Valley SunDome on Saturday, but it found itself trailing 2-0 to open the match with no more room for error.

After losing 3-0 in the 2022 State Championship and following up with fourth-place finishes in each of the past two seasons — including an extremely close 3-2 loss to Curtis in last year’s semifinals — Lake Stevens appeared destined to just barely come up short once again.

After coming all this way, is this really how it would end? Not a single person in the purple-and-gold would accept that.

“(I) just encouraged them to believe themselves,” Lake Stevens coach Kyle Hoglund told The Herald over the phone on Sunday. “Believe in each other to do their job to the best they can, and try not to do somebody else’s for them. To stay in their lane and just execute, and we all had a strong belief that we were the better team, and we just needed to calm down and go do it.”

After losing the first set 25-16, Lake Stevens started to work momentum back in its favor, but not before the top-seeded Curtis Vikings (25-3) took the second set 25-22. From there, the No. 2 seed Vikings (24-0) rallied to win the next three sets 25-14, 25-17 and 15-7 to claim the program’s first-ever state championship.

For longtime coach Hoglund and a senior class that had spent their whole careers knocking on the door of a state title, it was cathartic. To avenge last year’s semifinal loss against the defending champions, and doing so in such a dramatic fashion, proved to each member of the team what they had already known.

“It makes it so much better,” senior Olivia Gonzales said. “The win tastes so much better because it just made it feel like we earned it. We earned it even more.”

Gonzales had 40 assists, while fellow senior Laura Eichert had 44 kills, both capping their high school careers with performances of a lifetime, especially in the later sets when each point became more crucial. Hoglund credited those two as well as classmate Kam Strom for being “the heartbeat” of the team. All three were freshmen on the state runner-up in 2022. All three walk away as state champions three years later.

Eichert, who was Washington’s Gatorade Player of the Year last season and is committed to play for the University of Oregon, said she experienced a tremendous amount of growth from the championship loss as a freshman to this past Saturday, and all those moments in between prepared both her and her teammates to finish the job this time.

“I am a completely different player than I was my freshman year,” Eichert said. “I have a lot better leadership now than I did (before) because of how (Hoglund) has taught me about that. I think we have a lot of great leaders on the team though, and everyone believes in each other so much. And I just think (my) freshman year, I never played in a game like that before. It was new to me, so just having that game experience and being able to share that with my teammates, and being able to motivate them and lead them to victory is just such a special feeling.”

But before the rise came the fall, and Hoglund believed his team came out a little too tense in the first set. Between the hype in the SunDome and the pressure of the moment against a team that had experience winning on this stage, it took some time for the Vikings to settle into their game.

While Eichert, Gonzales and Strom were on the 2022 state finalist roster, only Eichert appeared on the court, which made it unfamiliar territory for the rest of her teammates. Curtis took advantage by steaming out of the gate, playing at a much faster pace than Lake Stevens expected. Before they knew it, Curtis took the first set 25-16.

“We didn’t really necessarily understand the vibe and all of the emotions that really went into that game,” Strom said. “But they did, so I think that they had a lot of energy, and they really punched us in the face from the beginning.”

That continued early in the second set, but Hoglund noticed the team eventually started to see the momentum shift. Curtis called a timeout following a small Lake Stevens run that cut the deficit to 21-14, and the players could sense their opponents getting a little flustered. The Vikings continued to put together big kills and blocks, but Curtis escaped with a 25-22 set victory.

With a ‘refuse to lose’ mentality and momentum on its side, Lake Stevens cruised to a 25-14 victory in the third set to hold off the sweep, but the battle was far from over.

Curtis had built up a three-point lead in the late stages of the fourth set, just several points away from clinching the title. It was now or never for the trailing Vikings, and they answered the call.

Sophomore Ella Iseminger went on a long serving run, aided by a few key blocks from Strom and Gonzales as well as kills from Eichert to pull ahead for a 25-17 set win, forcing a decisive fifth set.

But between seeing their own play hit a rhythm and Curtis’ defeated body language, Lake Stevens could sense how the fifth set would play out.

“We hit (a) flow state,” Gonzales said. “We were just in a groove, and I don’t think there was much stopping us. You could tell that they were getting pretty down on themselves, and we were just on a roll. I don’t think there was anything that was going to stop us.”

Sure enough, the Vikings jumped out to a massive lead in the fifth set. On top of an impeccable serve receive as a collective, each individual contributed in her role, just as Hoglund emphasized entering the third set. Gonzales and sophomore Audrey Iseminger made great passes, Strom and senior Maddie Sowers continued to dominate around the net and Eichert cleaned up with her deadly attacks.

Locked in on the action in front of him, Hoglund eventually glanced up at the scoreboard and noticed the Vikings had a 12-3 lead. He turned to an assistant coach to ask if that was indeed the correct score. It finally started to sink in.

Lake Stevens built up so much confidence, it got to a point where Curtis delivered a big kill to cut it to 13-4, and Gonzales remembers not even caring. She knew how it was going to end.

Mistakes no longer fazed the Vikings. On the first match point, Eichert failed to convert on her attack, giving service back to Curtis. All it did was delay the inevitable.

“I was like, ‘Okay, give it to me again,’” Eichert recalled. “Like, ‘I want it again. I’m going to get it done.’ I didn’t even think about what just happened. I just always want the ball. I always want it, and so I was like, ‘(Gonzales), set me again.’ And she did, and she trusted me enough, and we got it done.”

Fittingly, Gonzales set up Eichert for the championship-clinching kill, securing a 15-7 fifth set win and the comeback 3-2 match victory.

Then came the celebration. The tears. The euphoria.

“It genuinely didn’t feel real,” Strom said. “(…) It was just so surreal, like I didn’t even believe it. And when the confetti was coming down, like it genuinely just brought tears to all of our eyes. We did it. This is how hard we have worked.”

After the initial celebration on the court and dinner back at the team’s hotel, the Vikings piled on the bus back home from Yakima. The team’s ability to impose a meltdown must have been contagious: The bus broke down in Bellevue, stranding them for two hours before a second bus could come get them and finish the journey.

While not ideal, it really just extended a night they didn’t want to end anyway. The girls passed the time by chatting, making TikToks and trying to get some sleep before getting back on the road, finally arriving in Lake Stevens around 2:30 a.m. By the time Eichert got home, she didn’t want to take off her jersey.

As much as the Vikings wanted to win for themselves and their teammates, delivering a state championship for their head coach was just as big of a motivation. Between the infamous bleacher mile around Vikings Stadium and the 150 burpees as a warm-up before workouts, as well as the offseason book club where the team analyzes books about mental toughness, the players lauded Hoglund’s ability to prepare them both physically and mentally for the exact type of moments that played out on Saturday.

Above all of that, the players expressed that Hoglund’s mental awareness and genuine care for each member of the program make him an easy person to rally behind, both on and off the court.

“(Hoglund) is one of the best coaches I’ve ever played for,” Eichert said. “It’s honestly been such a privilege because he’s helped me, not (only with) my volleyball, but my character and self-development. He’s honestly changed my life, and he deserves so much more than a state championship. He changed so many players’ lives for the positive that I just wanted, more than anything, to bring him home a state championship.”

Upon hearing about the players’ motivations for him, Hoglund took a long pause to compose himself.

“It’s a special moment,” Hoglund said. “I know these girls appreciate what I do for them, but it goes both ways, and it even goes deeper than that. For players in the past who have helped leave their legacy for these girls to understand what it takes.”

The Vikings have a championship parade planned for mid-December, but the memories of what they accomplished will stick with them for the rest of their lives.