MANITOU SPRINGS -Not unlike any untold numbers of high-school senior players nationwide leaving courts for the last time as competitors, Brooke Kudelski's face was understandably awash emotionally as she sought out her parents descending the bleachers.
Certainly there were tears of disappointment - the trip to the 2015 CHSAA Class 3A State Volleyball Championships went to a senior-driven enemy - but there had to be some of accomplishment as well. Bayfield's half-season standout did virtually everything asked of her Saturday, Nov. 7, in BHS' defeat of Brush and loss to 3A-Region VIII-hosting MSHS.
"We knew we could believe, you know, and when we believe then we can succeed," said junior Anna Pope. "Once Brooke came with that, we just knew.it's game time! She showed us it can happen."
"Being the senior on our team," Pope continued, "we wanted to go to state for her. We just wanted to play our hearts out for her so we could make that happen."
"It's disappointing, obviously, that we're not going to State, but looking at where we started our season.I think today every one of us was proud of the progress we've made," said junior libero Emily Bauer. "We came here and I think every single one of us showed who Bayfield was."
"They gave me all that they had," summarized head coach Terene Foutz, proud of her team's 13-12 record.
SEMIFINAL #2-BRUSH 1, AT BAYFIELD 3: Showing a Patriot League pedigree in hopes of recovering from a one-sided 11-25, 13-25, 16-25 loss to Manitou Springs minutes earlier, Brush managed to put some fear of an unknown into Foutz's young bunch, which also lacked sophomore regulars Kylee McCoy and Sydney Gabbard, and senior reserve Katie Hawkins.
Brush took a 2-1 lead in Game 3 and let the Wolverines get only as close as 22-17 before getting the winning points via two BHS errors and an unreturnable serve from junior Rachel Carwin. Coach Marta Tadolini's 29th-seeded Beetdiggers gave themselves a fighting chance against #17 Bayfield.
Still leading the match two games to one, BHS responded by starting Game 4 out 4-0 on sophomore Ashley Mottin's stuff of Mady Kerr, a Kudelski kill and two Maddi Foutz aces of Jade Gleason. Brush bounced back to tie at 6, but a Bauer ace soon put Bayfield back out front 13-6. That forced the 'Diggers to test their own patience in later gaining the lead at 18-17.
The sides swapped the next five points, but the Wolverines then got go-ahead kills from Kudelski and Pope, plus two Kerr hitting errors.
Sophomore Courtney Bayles eagerly sent her match-point serve long-she'd ended Game 1 with an ace, and broken Game 2 open with three straight-but Brush soph Tiffany Davis then netted against a Mottin block to seal Bayfield's 25-22, 25-12, 17-25, 25-21 victory.
The Wolverines weren't ready to settle for just one win.
FINAL-BAYFIELD 0, AT MANITOU SPRINGS 3: After a Game 1 loss, Kudelski was called upon to counter a match-opening kill. She later landed a bomb to offset MSHS senior Katie McKiel's finale-starting missile, and had terminated Bayles' sets to end exchanges after each of Foutz's two timeouts, trying to re-ignite BHS' competitive fire.
But when Kudelski viciously rejected McKiel one-on-one for a 5-3 lead in Game 2, it was as though BHS' 16-25 loss had never happened.
Or at least that's how Manitou Springs head coach Jane Squires viewed it. The locals' ability to tie the score at 8-8, 9-9 and 11-11 couldn't stop Kudelski from then tooling senior middle Kaitlann Brown and Bayfield from then eventually building an eye-opening 18-13 lead.
"That kind of sparked us!" Squires said. "I told my team, 'They are outhustling you!' Bayfield is a GREAT team; they did some nice hustling, scampering around, and for a while they just outplayed us!"
"We came back and decided their intensity level needed to be less than ours," Bayfield's Pope explained after the game. "Ours needed to be equal or greater than theirs, and we decided we'd go in with all we have and be relentless."
MSHS managed a 5-0 burst to tie at 18, re-tied at 20 and seemed to have the upper hand at 22-20 after a running tip by McKiel and a wide-drifted Foutz free ball.
But relentless BHS remained; Mottin placed a tip perfectly over a double-block to pull the Wolverines back to 22-22 and a Kudelski spike re-tied at 23 before Mustang senior Angala Jensen denied a Kudelski tip and McKiel secured the tense 25-23 win with a kill off Mottin's hand.
Game 3 started with an even split of the first 10 points. Bayfield managed to go up 2-1 on a Mottin kill through the middle, then battled back to 3-3 and then 5-5 on a mishandled Kudelski serve.
McKiel then answered with her second major mash, but nobody would have guessed it would be the first score in a game-changing 8-1 run which saw the Wolverines lose five points via errors. Amazingly for the Mustangs though, it still wasn't enough as Bayfield, beginning with a Taylor Morris kill, clawed back all the way to 15-14 with a Kudelski kill.
MSHS made some breathing room, but it didn't last long as Pope kills kept BHS within a point at 17-16 and 18-17 before Manitou again separated out to 22-17, forcing Terene Foutz into a timeout after a McKiel ace and senior McKenzi Petricko's kill off a Bayles block.
"Honestly, I just wanted to throw down!" Pope said. "Like, you watch them in their warm-up and against Brush.they're a great team and that makes you want to play more, you know? Not just for you, but for your teammates also."
"I think every single one of us really put our hearts out there," said Bauer, exhausted after a machine-like effort in the back row which unfortunately wasn't enough as Petricko polished off Bayfield's season with a kill to take a 25-16, 25-23, 25-20 triumph. Amidst the 19-6 Mustangs' State-bound celebration, Squires wholly knew she'll face similar expectations in 2016, no matter how young her roster, to those accompanying Foutz in 2015.
"This season.people weren't really too sure who Bayfield was going to be, weren't too sure if we were going to be winning games or losing games," said Bauer. "We truly weren't too confident in ourselves-in making it to regionals-at the beginning! We made it a long way.kind of proving to people that next year, it's ours!"
"Next year, there's going to be a big group of us seniors so it's going to be a year to put everything that we have on the court. And I think today was really a good day to set the pace."
"We know we're capable.know that we're a great team and can totally scrap with them," Pope said. "We could have beaten them, honestly, but we did what we could-it sets us up for next season."
