Short and sweet

WASILLA — It only took 60 minutes Saturday for the Wasilla Warriors to send the Kodiak Bears into an early hibernation.

The Warriors (12-0) remain undefeated in Northern Lights Conference play with a pair of weekend wins over the Bears (3-5). Wasilla won Friday 3-1 (25-19, 23-25, 25-15, 25-18) and played to a quick 3-0 (25-11, 25-21, 25-20) victory Saturday.

Although topping the conference and undefeated, Wasilla head coach Claudia Farias Pinard is looking for her team to stay hungry and not get caught up in its success.

“We have been playing and practicing hard, but then came out (Friday) a little off,” she said. “Today, we put our heads back and played hard.”

Wasilla took momentum early and never let up, serving to a 5-0 lead to start the first game and holding the Bears to just one point on their serve. Kayla Bell set the tone serving for those first points, including a pair of aces.

Teammate Sariah Tuisaula had four of her 10 kills and three of her 10 aces in the first game.

“She’s a really solid player, and she can do even better,” Pinard said of Tuisaula. “She has great potential.”

For Wasilla, team chemistry is starting to pay dividends on the court, Tuisaula said, and hard work in practice gave the Warriors an edge on service against Kodiak.

“This whole week we’ve been working on serves nonstop, 30 serves a day,” she said. “We’re trying to keep that momentum for being undefeated. Our team has a lot of heart. We really want to make it to state, we really want to win state. To do that, we have to keep our momentum and have to keep going, stay strong.”

That momentum is hard to capture and easy to lose, Pinard said. While it’s nice to be 11-0 now, that doesn’t mean anything if the team doesn’t win at regionals and moves on to the state tournament.

It all starts with the serve, she said. Even if a strong serve is returned, there’s a good chance that returned ball will be playable.

“For me, I think it’s really important for the momentum of the game if you have tough serves, and I practice that a lot,” she said. “There were a few mistakes today, but even if we make a lot of points, those little mistakes I don’t like. I’m always looking for 100 percent serves.”

Wasilla may not have been 100 percent on service Saturday, but dominated the Bears with 18 aces and outscored Kodiak on the serve 38-18 in the match.

Contributing to Saturday’s dominance was the performance of the team’s middle hitters and setters, Tuisaula said.

“Our middles really stepped up,” she said. “Usually, we’re more of an outside team, but they’ve really stepped it up and have started getting those balls down.”

After Wasilla won the first game quickly, Kodiak began the second stanza strong, tying the Warriors at 8. But Tuisaula was there to nip any hope the Bears had in the bud, serving for five straight points, including three aces, to bump the lead back to 15-9.

The Warriors would cruise the rest of the way, winning the second game 25-21. Another early Kodiak run in the final game gave the Bears a 5-2 lead, but Tuisaula was there again to close the door, serving for five straight points (including four consecutive aces) to push the advantage to 12-8, which was as close as Kodiak would get to the conference leaders.

“Our team just has so much chemistry this year, and I think that’s what’s helping us a lot,” Tuisaula said. “We hang out a lot after school and we get along well, and I think that really creates a good team.”

Being unbeaten also places a target on the Warriors every time they take the court, Pinard said. She counters that by making sure her girls keep their focus.

“This team wants to win, and we take every game as THE game,” she said. “We are caring about every single game, and that’s the way they’re thinking.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.