BOTHELL — Audrey Williams was adamant that this would not be the end of Lynnwood volleyball’s season.

Even after Mountlake Terrace took a 2-0 lead in the District 1 3A Tournament play-in at Lynnwood High School on Thursday, the senior middle blocker/setter implored her teammates to keep fighting heading into the third set. The first two sets could have gone either way, as the visitors picked up 26-24 and 25-22 set victories, but Lynnwood had no more room for error.

Coming back from down 2-0 to win a volleyball match is easier said than done, but in Lynnwood’s case, it had already been done in the last matchup against Mountlake Terrace on Oct. 12. With that memory in mind, the players’ belief never wavered.

Even when Mountlake Terrace went ahead 18-17 in the third set, Lynnwood went on an 8-3 run to force a fourth, where a seven-point run to turn an 8-8 tie into a 15-8 lead proved insurmountable for Mountlake Terrace. In the fifth set, Williams — who told her teammates that their season would continue — walked the walk with four kills in the first eight points to take a 6-2 lead.

With all the momentum on their side, the No. 8 seed Royals (12-6) completed the comeback to win 3-2 (24-26, 22-25, 25-21, 25-16, 15-6) against the No. 9 seed Hawks (10-8), punching their ticket to the district quarterfinals.

“We know we’re better than them, and we just fought every single point,” Williams said. “I’m just so proud of my team.”

Williams finished with 21 kills, and junior Petra Guirges added 12 kills and three aces. Junior Nadia Sundquist (10 kills, two aces), senior Maria Alaniz Luna (seven kills) and sophomore Jordana Leme Pezzano (four aces) were the other stat leaders.

More than simply willing its way to victory, Lynnwood managed to shift its mentality in real time. The Royals had shown frustration with a few close calls that fell Mountlake Terrace’s way in the first two sets. Chief among them: A serve they thought touched the baseline that was ruled out, which gave the Hawks a 25-24 lead right before a set-sealing ace, as well as a Lynnwood net violation to end the second set.

Rather than dwell on those pivotal situations, the Royals chose to remain positive.

“The first two sets, we did have our doubts, we were unsure. We were thinking negatively,” Guirges said. “After the (second) set ended, I took everyone together and said, ‘We’re going to finish it on the third set. There are no dropped balls. Everyone go after every single ball. No negativity, smiles only.’ And that’s what kept happening. In our timeouts, I say, ‘Only positivity,’ and from there it went up.”

First-year coach Lisa McCullough noticed the defense tightened up, which led to better passes to the setters and stronger connections with the hitters. Playing more cohesively, Lynnwood could execute adjustments in its attacks with off-speed shots and tips to keep Mountlake Terrace off-balance, and the home side rolled from there.

The third set started out airtight. The two teams alternated each point from 5-5 to 11-11, the Royals taking the lead and the Hawks tying it up. The set remained close when back-to-back kills from Williams and junior Maya Holden put Lynnwood ahead 19-18, but each of the next six Royals points came from Mountlake Terrace errors or violations, allowing them to pick up a 25-21 win to cut the match score to 2-1.

“They see that,” McCullough said. “They see that they’re frustrated, so they try to pinpoint those frustrated players and get them, and then capitalize on it, obviously.”

Out of nowhere, the combatting positive and negative energies on the court flipped sides, just as Guirges hoped. Hawks coach Jean Kellogg, who previously coached Lynnwood from 1997-2012, could feel it as well, but she never stopped urging her players on.

In the teams’ first matchup of the season on Sept. 17, Mountlake Terrace defeated the Royals 3-1 for its first head-to-head victory in 11 years. The Hawks had not even won a game within those matches in that span, according to Kellogg. She believes that history played a role in the mental side on Thursday.

“When they’re an opponent that they’ve lost to, lost to, lost to— They busted their tails those first two games,” Kellogg said. “They looked great, and then the people who’ve been there, who had the three years of experience of losing to Lynnwood, you saw a couple people give up on themselves. … It just kind of imploded, and there wasn’t a big thing that Lynnwood was doing against us. We did it to ourselves, the mindset.”

By the fourth set, it looked like an entirely different match. Back-to-back blocks from Alaniz Luna helped the Royals take a 5-2 lead, but Mountlake Terrace managed to cut it close again. That would be the last time.

A 7-0 run from Lynnwood with big plays from Williams, Guirges and Leme Pezzano created a 15-8 lead. An athletic dig from Holden ultimately led to a Sundquist kill assisted by Leme Pezzano to extend the lead to 20-10. A kill and two aces from Hawks junior Campbell Meek trimmed the deficit, but there would be no catching the Royals, who forced the fifth set with a 25-16 victory.

“I think really utilizing all of our hitters, and our setters knowing what hitter to set in the crucial times,” Williams said, labeling the biggest key to the fourth-set run.

Williams helped Lynnwood jump out to an early lead in the fifth set, and while the Hawks cut it to 8-5, they hit back-to-back shots out of bounds to give the Royals a comfortable 10-5 lead. An ace from Sundquist followed by a block and a kill from Alaniz Luna all but sealed it at 13-6. A Mountlake Terrace net violation and an attack out of bounds is what finally did.

“We always think of the next point, never the past,” Guirges said. “… The fifth set, we said, ‘First to five, first to 10, first to 13, first to 15.’ And we finished it.”

Lynnwood is just two years removed from winning the second of back-to-back District Championships in 2023 and 2024, but the program dipped with a 4-14 campaign in 2025. Williams and Guirges described last year as the team “falling apart,” but with a revitalized leadership group and a coach in McCullough who listens to players and understands what the team wants, as they put it, the program took a step forward with a 6-6 league record this season.

“It’s the winning tradition here at Lynnwood, and that’s what I came in to do: Build a culture, and get them to engage with one another,” McCullough said. “It’s a whole program thing from our C-team all the way up to our varsity. I try to get them together and just kind of gel together as one group. I think that’s really that bonding, and that’s really coming together for them.”

The program will receive a huge test in the quarterfinals on Saturday against the top-seed Stanwood (14-2), whose team was in attendance to scout on Thursday. Williams still remembers the taste of postseason success as an underclassman on both of the Royals’ District Championship teams. After climbing back from the depths of last season, she’s even hungrier for more.

“This year, it just feels really good to really get back into the game and be happy again since last season,” Williams said. “I’m just excited to play Stanwood at their home, and see what we can do there.”