LAKE STEVENS — On paper, the volleyball matchup between Kamiak and Lake Stevens was expected to be a close one. Both programs were undefeated in Wesco 4A when stepping foot into the Lake Stevens gym on Thursday, and each had just two losses overall.
Yet somehow, on the court, it played out even tighter.
In a back-and-forth battle, the Knights (9-2 overall, 4-0 in league) narrowly came out on top with a 3-2 win (17-25, 25-19, 14-25, 25-12, 15-13) against the Vikings (9-3, 3-1), overcoming a 2-1 set deficit. The victory marked Kamiak’s first win over Lake Stevens since 2015.
“We’ve been going against Lake every single year. We’re always in their conference,” Knights senior Ivanna Kozodoy said. “We’re always taking them, and then barely losing, taking them, barely losing, and I think this year, we just got fed up, bro. We were like, ‘Nah, nah, this ain’t happening again.’”
It very well could have.
While Kamiak carried the momentum from an emphatic 25-12 fourth-set victory into the fifth, taking a 9-4 lead behind seven kills from senior Cadence Bigby, Lake Stevens fought to make it 13-13, prompting Knights coach Jeffrey Choe to call one last timeout. Even with no more margin for error, he encouraged his team to play without fear.
“I told them that we want to play,” Choe said. “I don’t care if we win the point or lose the point. We get to play more, and that we’re going to have to go, and we’re going to have to scrap, stay aggressive, and they did. It showed them how they played and the confidence that they played with, and thankfully worked out in our favor. But even if it didn’t, I’m just proud of how hard they worked.”
A Kozodoy receive led to an assist from senior Skyla Major for yet another kill from Bigby to give Kamiak the 14-13 edge, and after a long rally that included a couple big digs from each side to keep the point alive, the final attack from the Vikings soared out past the base line, securing the win for the visitors.
Bigby had 25 kills and 22 digs, while Major (23 assists, three aces) and freshman Elin Braddock (20) each eclipsed 20 assists. Kozodoy had 26 digs, and junior Annika Hastings had four blocks.
“This season, we just have really been working on playing as a team and finally coming together instead of playing for ourselves,” Bigby said. “And I think that really just brought it together at the end, to really push through with each other instead of just on our own.”
For Lake Stevens, junior Ella Iseminger had a game-high 30 kills and 17 digs, and junior Miah Congdon pitched in 26 assists, eight aces and four kills. Freshman Maia Aiwohi tacked on 18 assists, and junior Audrey Iseminger had 18 assists.
“Give it to Kamiak, they showed up and they played well,” Vikings coach Kyle Hoglund said. “It was a tough match back-and-forth. … We had some serves go away, and some good hits and some unforced errors. It’s just the game of volleyball. It happens fast.”
That said, the match started out slow on Thursday, with a sequence of mishit balls by each side starting the first set at 5-5. Kamiak took a 9-7 lead as Braddock assisted back-to-back kills, but Lake Stevens leveled it before going on a five-point run to take a 15-10 lead. Ella Iseminger had two kills before a diving dig from Audrey Iseminger set up a kill from junior Audrey Deller, and an ace from Congdon extended the lead further. More kills from Ella Iseminger helped the Vikings maintain the gap, and they ultimately pulled away for a 25-17 set victory.
Lake Stevens got off to a hot start in the second set, taking a 5-0 lead, but the Knights reeled it in with contributions from all over the court. Kills from Bigby, junior Lily Anderson and sophomore Everly Ruck helped cut it to 12-10, and after a Vikings error, an ace from Major tied it 12-12. The two sides jockeyed back-and-forth before a hard dig from Kozodoy led to a Bigby kill, and a Bigby ace pushed it to 19-17 after a Lake Stevens violation. Senior Olivia Hamilton put things out of reach with an ace followed by a dig leading up to Bigby’s set-clinching kill, tying the match 1-1 with a 25-19 set victory.
“We really just went out there and just had our trust in each other,” Kozodoy said about cleaning things up after the first set. “Like if I had a bad pass, I knew that someone would cover me. If I didn’t make my serve over, I knew that someone would come and cheer me up, and it would all be good. We all pushed through.”
The Vikings started off strong again in the third set as Congdon racked up four aces and Deller delivered a block to start up 6-0, but this time they would not let Kamiak overtake them. The Iseminger sisters and Congdon consistently moved the ball amongst each other to rack up points, and Ella Iseminger closed things out with three straight kills to take a 2-1 set lead with the 25-14 victory.
Just when it appeared Lake Stevens had a stranglehold on the match, the Knights struck again. Back-to-back kills from Bigby and a Braddock ace pulled Kamiak ahead 7-4, and after a handful of mistakes from the Vikings widened the gap, Bigby delivered a pair of first-ball kills to make it 16-10. From there, the Knights forced the deciding set with a 9-2 run highlighted by a couple kills from Ruck.
“I think it comes with confidence,” Bigby said about attacking on the first hit. “Just knowing and having that court awareness, like ‘I know that I can get this ball on a place that they don’t know where it is,’ and I think that we’re starting to develop that mental game, and knowing their spacing and everything, so I think that’s great.”
The visiting cheering section got louder with every point, and Kamiak fed off that energy to take a 9-4 lead in the fifth set. However, with a kill from junior Tatum Lewis and an ace from freshman Laura Phinney on back-to-back points, Lake Stevens shifted the momentum once again. Following two more kills from Ella Iseminger and an ace from Audrey Iseminger, a block from junior Maddie Silvers tied it 10-10.
The Vikings put themselves back in a hole after sending two consecutive balls out of play, and while Ella Iseminger once again led the attack to pull it to a 13-13 tie, the Knights took the next two points to break the head-to-head drought.
“I think both sides played super well,” Choe said. “I think the big thing was just the mentality and the focus that really came down to it at the end, and yeah, shout out to the team for the work that they’ve been putting in. They’ve (Lake Stevens) been working hard as well, so it’s any team on any given night.”
Kamiak now sits alone atop Wesco 4A with five matches left, including a rematch with the Vikings as the regular-season finale on Nov. 3. The stakes will be even higher for a potential league title match, as 2015 was also the last year Lake Stevens did not win Wesco 4A. Thursday’s result left the Knights feeling confident they could end that streak as well.
“We want to see how far we can go as a good team this year,” Bigby said. “And we’re super excited to see where we end up.”
