<\/a>Thunder Mountain’s Ashlyn Gates hits the ball past Ketchikan High School defenders during their 3-1 victory over the Lady Kings during the championship game of the Region V Volleyball Tournament at Ketchikan on Saturday. (Christopher Mullen \/ Ketchikan Daily News)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
TMHS and Ketchikan split the first two sets of the regional championship game 25-21 and 22-25 before the Falcons asserted their season-long dominance by winning the final two sets 25-10 and 25-16.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“They came at us pretty hard,” Thunder Mountain senior Ashlyn Gates told the Ketchikan Daily News. “We did have a little bit of trouble. They were bringing some offense pretty hard at us, but we did pretty well getting it together and just rallying back in the last two sets.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Although TMHS prevailed in every regular season game against Ketchikan, the mindset was different coming into the tournament that started Friday, Falcons coach Julie Herman told the Empire on Sunday.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“The regional tournament is completely different than regular season because every team’s come into play for their last matches of the season, so it’s always more intense and there’s more invested,” she said. “And so it was a great weekend of volleyball, all three teams showed up really strong. Ketchikan played with a lot of heart, and we talked about it, we had to want it more, we had to work harder and we had to do a couple other magical things to make it happen.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/a>Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé’s Gwen Nizich hits the ball during their 3-0 loss to Ketchikan High School during the Region V Volleyball Tournament at Ketchikan on Saturday. (Christopher Mullen \/ Ketchikan Daily News)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Ketchikan coach Dennis Walsh told the Ketchikan Daily News his team was able to take advantage of TMHS errors during the first sets.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“In the first couple sets a lot of their hits were just going out,” he said. “We were putting pressure up on the ball on the net and forcing them to hit high. In that third set, they just kind of started swinging. They are attacking from so many different positions that you have to give something up. We were giving up the deep back-line stuff, not wanting to get beat in that donut hole in front, and they just started hitting those spots.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The double-elimination tournament started on Friday with Ketchikan sweeping JDHS 25-16, 25-22 and 25-12. The Kings then played a back-and-forth series of sets against TMHS before losing by sets scores of 25-22, 26-24, 25-20.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
JDHS, after their initial loss Friday and facing elimination in a Saturday rematch against Ketchikan, showed some of the team’s improvement and resilience from the regular season by keeping the score tight during much of the game. The first set was tied 15-15 before Ketchikan went on a 10-1 to prevail, JDHS led 18-16 in the second set before Ketchikan took it with a 9-5 closing run and the Crimson Bears led the third set 20-16 before the Kings advanced to the title game with a 25-22 win.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t