OLYMPIA — There might be some magic in Capital High School’s new gym floor.
Or perhaps that magic came from the return of Cougars volleyball legend Maia Nichols to the program as its new head coach.
Maybe it’s the Salad Bowl/Spaghetti Bowl fever in the crisp Olympia air.
Wherever the source, the Capital volleyball team hit the jackpot.
For the first time in five years, the Capital Cougars triumphed over their crosstown rival Olympia in an epic five-set Salad Bowl showdown Thursday night to snap a five-game skid against the Bears. In fact, Capital hadn’t even won a set against Olympia since that last victory on March 9, 2021, during the spring season amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Undefeated on the new gym floor? Check.
Undefeated under head coach Nichols? You betcha.
“It means everything. These girls have been working so hard in practice every single day,” Nichols said. “I told the girls, ‘Thanks for the nice debut.’”
It wasn’t all magic from the opening serve, however. Capital rallied from down two sets to one, and with the game on the line in the fourth set, the Cougars came back from down 10 points to force a fifth set, which they won comfortably.
The packed Cougars student section rushed the court as soon as junior Eliza Mikkelsen’s serve hit the floor for the match-sealing ace.
“It was amazing. I knew that point was gonna be it. I really wanted to put it all out there on that last point,” Mikkelsen said. “I knew that serve was gonna be good. I’ve been practicing that short jump serve a lot and am finally getting it, and I knew that was my chance.”
Stella Sheeran, Olympia’s star junior outside hitter and University of Washington commit, was difficult to stop in the opening set. Sophomore middle blocker Sophie Deiss also diced up the Cougars with a pair of service aces early to put the Bears in front 10-5. Capital chipped away and eventually tied the set at 17-17 before Sheeran took over again with a handful of powerful kills to close out a 25-21 first-set win.
The Cougars jumped on the Bears to start the second set, as a Clara Cariaso service ace put Capital ahead 8-4 and forced an Oly timeout. After trailing by as many as six, Olympia strung together an 8-2 run led by Netty Obungu and McKenzie Madill to knot the score at 14-14.
An ace by Claire Anderson and a kill by Mikkelsen put Capital back up by three at 20-17, but the Bears caught fire from the service line with back-to-back aces by Deiss to retake the lead at 21-20.
Capital went jab for jab with its rival in the waning moments of the second set, and Taeva Hartman clinched the Cougars’ first set victory over Olympia in five years with a kill to make it 25-23. Capital had lost 16 consecutive sets to the Bears before that second-frame triumph.
Clara Sandberg dominated the start of the third set from the front row to the service line to help the Cougars get out to a 9-4 lead. The Bears roared back with a 7-1 run behind pinpoint accuracy on serves from Kate Wolter and Deiss. That run made it 11-10 Olympia, and the Bears never trailed again, winning 25-21 to put the Cougars on the ropes.
“We made some really nice adjustments with getting our out-of-system balls in a good place for our pin hitters,” Olympia head coach Christie Oldright said. “Stella Sheeran played hard, and Sophie Deiss had some clutch under-pressure serves tonight that dug us out of a couple moments.”
It was all Bears out of the gates in the fourth, and it appeared Capital’s magic was running out. The Bears scored the first six points of the frame, the last four of which all came from Madill aces. Olympia then opened up a 13-3 advantage behind a couple of kills by Anna Johnston and a big block by Deiss.
With Olympia holding a 17-7 lead in the fourth following a sloppy error by Capital, the Bears’ student section began chanting, “This is our house.”
Turns out, it’s not.
Capital scored seven unanswered points after that chant, with Anderson kickstarting the run via a kill and two consecutive aces. Those back-to-back aces proved to be foreshadowing of how the set would finish.
The Cougars took their first lead of the fourth at 23-22 off an attack error by Olympia, and another error put the Cougars up two needing one more point to force a fifth set. Olympia scrapped back with three straight points, capped off by another Deiss service ace.
But Capital had the last laugh, scoring the final three, including, you guessed it, two aces in a row by Anderson to finish off the 10-point comeback and win 27-25.
“It took a few timeouts,” Nichols said with a laugh about the spark of the comeback. “We told them, ‘You guys are the ones that are gonna have to want it. You guys gotta dig deep and trust your training.’ They had to trust that they could do it, and they did it.”
Olympia scored the first three points of the fifth set off two errors by Capital and a Sheeran kill, but the Bears would only score three more points the rest of the way. The Cougars responded with nine unanswered points, many of which stemmed from Olympia’s attack errors, and they kept their foot on the gas pedal, with Mikkelsen’s final ace serving as the knockout blow in a 15-6 fifth-set win.
No one on the Capital roster, which is only 10 deep for varsity, had ever seen a fourth set against Olympia, let alone a fifth set or even a victory. They were determined to turn the tides in the crosstown rivalry that had once been lopsided for a half decade.
“My teammate said, ‘We have nothing to lose, and they have everything to lose,’” Anderson said. “That really stuck out to me. We’re so passionate, and we wanted this win so bad. We’ve talked about it all the time. This was our game.”
Capital players gave a shoutout to the new court for helping them bounce higher and move quicker, and they thanked the student section for their constant energy throughout the night.
“I’ve never felt something like that. The energy is usually there in the first and second set, but once the wins go down, it changes,” Mikkelsen said. “This win is going to move us forward so much. We have that confidence of knowing we can beat our biggest rivals and a 4A school.”
Capital (1-0) will travel to Bellarmine next Thursday with a heaping amount of momentum on its side. Nichols is no stranger to success in this program, as she helped the Cougars win the 2017 3A state title and reach at least the state semifinals four years in a row.
Few better understand what it takes to vault the Capital volleyball team to the top, and now just one game into her head coaching tenure, Nichols may have already helped plant an invaluable seed toward bringing the program back to where she left it as a player.
“They are extremely resilient. I learned that they can push through any adversity that’s thrown their way,” Nichols said. “They are a really tight-knit unit. I picked these 10 for a reason. They care about each other. I’m really proud of my girls.”
For Olympia (0-1), the schedule doesn’t get much easier with 2A powerhouse Tumwater coming to town next week, and the Bears will travel to Battle Ground to face Prairie. They’ll certainly have plenty of motivation coming off an emotional rivalry defeat in which they watched a sizable lead slip away.
“We started piling up some unforced errors. At no point in any set can we get comfortable,” Oldright said. “It’s a good learning experience that no set is over until it’s over.”
Sheeran led the Bears with 18 kills and 23 digs, while Madill dished out 30 assists and sprinkled in seven aces. Johnston recorded a triple double in her first outing of the season with 15 kills, 13 digs and 11 assists.
Capital’s statistics will be added once they become available.
