The way Pagosa Springs’ players flooded Bayfield High School’s court Tuesday night, you’d have thought they were celebrating a 3A Intermountain League championship, not just a five-set win.
But considering how wide-open the IML volleyball field is this season, well … the Pirates certainly positioned themselves to contend thanks to a 25-21, 22-25, 11-25, 25-22, 15-12 victory over Bayfield.
“We had to work our butts off; they’re always a great team,” said Pagosa Springs High School head coach Katie Lorenzen, taking over in 2022 for Caitlin Forrest. “They’ve got big, strong hitters and got some good kills on us, but our girls just didn’t get so down on themselves that they couldn’t come back … and they fought. Super proud of them.”
“I thought it was a good matchup,” BHS head coach Terene Foutz said. “It didn’t work out for us tonight, but I thought this was the best Bayfield’s played so far this year. Kudos to Pagosa; they earned it.”
The Wolverines’ ferocity showed in Game 3 with a lopsided 25-11 win.
Pagosa Springs, however, began Game 4 with a Grace Betts service ace and proceeded to battle back into the match.
An ace by BHS’ Kori Jenkins tied the score at 18-18 before the Pirates (6-1 overall, 1-1 IML) pieced together a crucial 5-1 run – giving them just enough breathing room to survive after Bayfield closed to 23-22. Lorenzen called a timeout, and PSHS managed to even the match at two games apiece when Chantelle Caldwell scored with a tip shot.
Pagosa Springs struck first in the deciding race to 15, but the Wolverines (3-7, 1-1) stormed ahead, 7-2, after a kill by K’Lee Stuffelbeam-Jolly. Foutz noted that in Game 2 alone Stuffelbeam-Jolly hit 8-of-9 with no errors. After a kill by PSHS’ Aspen Pitcher sliced the lead to 8-7, Bayfield took a concerned timeout, but the guests persisted, finally regaining the lead at 10-9 via another Pitcher put-away.
Wolverine Allia Connell answered with a kill, but BHS got no closer than 13-12 the rest of the way before Pagosa’s Kynslie Limebrook and Beatrice Carpenter combined on match point to repel Bayfield setter Tanna Owens’ attempted tip shot.
“Being down 7-2 in the fifth, that was just all heart and effort out there,” Lorenzen said. “Bayfield was not giving it to us easily, for sure,”
“We made some switches that sometimes can just not work at all,” she continued. “But I’ve got a lot of really smart girls and incredible athletes hustling all over. We switched liberos and we switched our middles – we flip-flopped them – and I think it gave us a different look, gave our hitters different people to be next to. That might have been just the little trick we needed.”
Pitcher finished with a reported eight kills and Caldwell seven as Betts totaled 20 assists and 10 digs.
PSHS last prevailed against Bayfield in 2018, almost four years ago to the day; BHS had won the seven encounters since.
“It’s been quite a while since we’ve beaten Bayfield,” Lorenzen said. “This was definitely huge; our girls are super excited to get this win.”
Pagosa Springs will next host Centauri on Saturday.
The Wolverines, meanwhile, will have plenty of time to regroup and fine-tune before next seeing action Sept. 23 at Centauri, then again the next morning at Alamosa
“We’re going to learn from this, but I really like the direction we’re going compared to where we were a month ago,” Foutz said. “And we’ve got about a week and a half … we’ll go hard through the week and we have some clinics that we’re going to sprinkle in, to kind of mix it up a little bit and just help these kids with their position work.
“We can sew up loose ends, put our full game together – I’m really grateful that we have time to do that; we’re going to roll up our sleeves!”
