YAKIMA — At the start of her first season as Tumwater’s head coach, Kennedy Croft wasn’t quite certain what the mental makeup for her team would be.
The Thunderbirds weren’t starting from the ground up. Chiseled veterans made up a squad that had qualified for the state quarterfinals in back-to-back seasons.
But Croft wanted to know how her team would respond in adverse situations, how it would flush mistakes and focus on the next play. The T-Birds didn’t have many adverse situations to learn from this season, but Croft believes her team is at its best mentally right now. That strength showed as fourth-seeded Tumwater comfortably swept 13th-seeded R.A. Long in the first round Friday afternoon 25-17, 25-19, 25-14.
Each set read similarly; the Lumberjacks took an early lead and forced the T-Birds to regroup. Tumwater didn’t flinch, and the efficiency of its servers and power of its outside hitters against a rotational defense it hadn’t quite seen this season made the difference in every set.
“I just keep telling the girls, ‘Trust your training. The moment’s not too big for us. Just stay present with what’s in front of us,’” Croft said. “I challenged [our outside hitters] this week to really work on being a little more crafty and having that ‘me versus you’ mentality when they’re hitting. I love that they mixed up their shots a lot today.”
Not only did the T-Birds trust themselves when looking at a deficit early, but their coaches did too. Croft did not use one timeout during the contest.
“We are super mentally tough right now, and I love that I can say that because I probably wouldn't have said that at the beginning or middle of the season,” Croft said. “But we’ve worked really hard on our mindset, going into games with confidence, focusing on that next play, flushing mistakes super quickly and then having that team-first mentality.”
R.A. Long scored the first four points of the first set and at one point held a 7-3 lead before Tumwater rattled off 5-0 run to take its first and final lead of the frame. The T-Birds separated themselves with another 10-2 run en route to a 25-17 opening-set victory. Senior Tove Hugus and junior Kyla Malroy consistently found gaps in the Lumberjacks defense and punished them with overpowering kills.
The second set was a bit tighter than the first, as neither team held a lead bigger than four until it was 17-16 Tumwater, when the T-Birds broke off an 8-3 run led by a handful of Hugus kills to win the set 25-19.
R.A. Long once again got off to a strong start in the third, tallying the first three points, but Tumwater rebounded quicker than the first two sets using eight straight points. The Lumberjacks caught up to make it 15-13 at one point, before the T-Birds unleashed a 10-1 sprint led by Malroy and Paige Henderson to close out the set 25-14 and the match.
Hugus led Tumwater with 19 kills and converted on an impressive 35% of her attacks. Malroy tacked on seven kills. Senior setter Bailey Broeker dished out 31 assists in the sweep.
Tumwater (17-3) advances to the state quarterfinals for the third straight year, but the round has been challenging for the program since its 2016 state title run, as the T-BIrds have fallen short in all three of those quarterfinal appearances.
Broeker, who was a member of the team when it was swept in each of the last two quarterfinals, said the T-Birds are more mentally prepared for what’s ahead than ever before.
“It’s been a long journey for a lot of us. We’ve all kind of struggled with our mental health and the toughness of the sport because it is a game of mistakes,” she said. “But I think we did a really good job of adjusting and becoming the team that we are today. We are the team to beat. I think we did a great job of stepping into that and embracing that.”
The T-Birds will face fifth-seeded Sehome in the quarterfinals at 8 p.m. If they win, they will head to the semifinals, where they could face unbeaten top seed Lynden or West Valley, at 10:45 a.m. Saturday.
“We have to be disciplined on defense, know our responsibilities and our jobs in the moment, and then stay present in the moment,” Croft said of what it will take to get over the quarterfinals hump. “One point at a time, play for each other and have a lot of fun, too.”
