Clutch play leads Knights to title game

ANCHORAGE — There’s exciting, and then there’s what happened Friday afternoon inside the West Anchorage High School gymnasium.

The Colony Knights volleyball team was a beaten group of players. They’d thrown their best punch at Anchorage's Dimond High, and the Lynx still stood tall.

Worse yet, Dimond had fought back.

Hard.

In the stands, the cheers of Dimond’s maroon-clad supporters rose to a fever pitch as the Lynx closed in on their first state title game appearance in a decade. Colony was out on its feet.

All that was needed was a final knockout blow.

It never came.

Colony battled from a six-point deficit in the decisive game, winning 19-17 to advance to Saturday's Alaska class 4A volleyball championship game and dash Dimond’s hopes of claiming its first crown since 1994. The 3-2 (21-25, 25-20, 25-19, 12-25, 19-17) win moved Colony into Saturday’s final against two-time defending state champion South Anchorage, which swept Eagle River in Friday’s nightcap.

“We knew that we just had to push through it because there’s been major comebacks before,” Colony junior Allie Grazulis said following the match.

Colony, the 1998-99 state champions, last played in a state final at the end of the 2003-04 season, losing to Anchorage’s Service High.

Dimond had taken control of Thursday’s semifinal with a 25-12 rout in the fourth game, tying the match at two games and leaving the Knights looking stunned and worried after losing the 2-1 lead they’d built through the first three games.

The Lynx continued to dominate the Knights in the fifth game, taking a 9-3 lead on a Lauren Fulton ace.

Needing just 15 points to win, the Lynx clapped and cheered as if the match was already in hand. On the opposite bench, Colony’s third-year head coach, Amy Carter, was calmly rallying her troops for one last charge.

When Colony has run into trouble this season, Carter’s strategy has always been to have her team return to its most tried-and-true weapon — senior middle hitter Hannah Curtis. Coming out of the timeout, the Knights went right to their senior star, and she delivered, spiking a clean kill to cut the Dimond lead to five and pick up a crucial side-out.

Curtis then stepped to the service line and crushed the ball.

Out of bounds.

Curtis’ rare miscue put Dimond just five points from victory, but her confident spike a point earlier seemed to plant a seed of doubt into the minds of Dimond’s players. On its next serve, the Lynx put the ball into the net, handing the serve back to a Colony team primed to take advantage of any chink in the Dimond armor.

Getting a kill each from Grazulis and fellow senior Kristen Coan, Colony scored three of the next four points to cut the lead to 11-8. Things were getting interesting.

A net serve by Coan gave Dimond its 12th point, but Grazulis fired back with a kill off a perfect pass from Siobhan Johansen to make it 12-9.

The teams traded points, 13-10.

What followed was the first of several improbable clutch plays on both sides that made for one of the most exciting five minutes in state tournament history.

With Dimond just two points from victory, the Lynx hit a dangerous shot directly into a hole in the Colony defense. With no choice but to dive, Colony sophomore Sierra Hodgson flung her body headlong toward the ball, reaching out at the last second and flicking the ball into the top of the net.

For a moment, the ball spun on top of the thin mesh dividing line, as if the volleyball Gods were unsure which team to favor. Finally, it fell.

Point Colony. 13-12.

With the Knights now on an 8-3 run, Dimond coach Kim Lauwers had to call time out in hopes of slowing Colony’s momentum.

No such luck. Coming out of the stoppage, Curtis again banged one of her match-high 26 kills (she had six in the final game alone) to the floor. Suddenly, the game was tied.

“We pretty much just focused because we knew we could come back if we stayed calm,” Grazulis said.

On the next point, Dimond hit out of bounds, giving Colony its first match point of the afternoon. But not its last.

Dimond outside hitter Chauntal Tes capped a wild rally with a big spike of her own to tie the game again, but Curtis followed that with yet another kill to give the Knights a second match point.

Another untimely service error, this time by junior Jackie Hamann, allowed the Lynx to again stave off elimination.

Yet another Curtis kill, this time off a Dimond block, gave the Knights a third chance to put the Lynx away.

Lauwers said Dimond simply had no answer for Curtis, an all-tournament player at state last year who may have cemented her reputation as the state's top hitter Friday.

“Her team gave her every single ball at the end. They weren't really going to anybody else and obviously there's a reason why. She’s finished matches in the past and we did everything we could on her,” Lauwers said. “But it wasn't enough.”

It almost was. On the next point, Grazulis was called for a net violation, and a Lauren Fulton kill one point later gave Dimond a 17-16 lead and its own shot at match point. Fulton had 18 kills and 26 digs for the Lynx, which also got 19 kills from Tes and 24 assists from junior setter Heidi Roebuck

After a short rally, it looked as if the Lynx had won by again finding a hole in the Colony defense. But this time it was Coan who came up with some magic, making a diving save that led to Johansen's second kill of the game. Normally a passer, the sophomore setter’s unlikely tip was true, sneaking past the Dimond front line and finding the floor.

Carter said she wasn’t surprised to see multiple players stepping up in the final minutes. While Curtis and Grazulis led the team’s offense, Colony received big contributions from everyone who played, including setters Diselrod (24 assists) and Johansen (21 assists) and Hamann, who led the Knights with 23 digs.

“All six of them just decided this is what they wanted, and they got it,” Carter said.

A more likely scoring culprit than Johansen, Grazulis put down her 20th kill of the match on the next point to give Colony its fourth try at clinching. This time, there would be no Dimond comeback, and when Fulton's spike was sent back by the net, Colony’s players stormed the court for a wild celebration.

“It feels great,” Grazulis said.

Colony coach Amy Carter had a slightly different take on the game's final minutes.

“Nerve wracking,” she said. “It’s fun though.”

Carter credited Dimond with pushing her team to its absolute limit.

“They’re definitely a great team, that was a great match,” she said.

Meanwhile, a disappointed Lauwers said she had no complaints about the way her team performed against the Knights.

“It was a little bit of a roller coaster, but our team didn’t give up,” Lauwers said.

Contact Frontiersman sports reporter Matt Tunseth at matt.tunseth@

frontiersman.com.