LASSIES WON'T BACK DOWN

HIGH SCHOOL VOLLEYBALL Lassies volleyball has had a tough schedule. So far, the team has played four schools in a higher league, including No. 1 ranked Camas and fifth-ranked Olympia, twice.

But it's all part of the plan, said Kelso coach Michelle Mury. With the new format of the 3A/4A Greater St. Helens League, 3A teams are only required to play the 4A league teams once, but Mury said she wanted to give her girls a challenge in order to improve.



And she's seeing the payoff. "It's given us opportunities to grow and expose our weaknesses," she said. "We have younger players and we want to bring them up to level of the returners.

Every game they continue to grow." Misleading record Most recently the Lassies played third-ranked Prairie in their own league on Tuesday. The Hilanders fought hard against the Falcons, but fell in three sets by scores of 19-25, 23-25 and 20-25.

Multiple times throughout the night the Lassies rallied to comeback when they were down, including scoring five straight points near the end of the first set. Kelso vs Union When: 7 p.m.

Tuesday. Where: Kelso. Overall record: 5-3.

League record: 0-1. (Editor's note: Kelso also played Mountain View at 7 p.m.

Wednesday in Vancouver, which is after our Thursday print deadline.) Isabella Moe anchored the Kelso defense with 21 digs to lead the team. She also had two aces.

Kelso's only three losses are to Camas, Olympia and Prairie (though the team played Camas and Olympia once each during a tournament that didn't count towards their record and once each in a nonleague matchup). Four of their five wins came against bigger 4A schools and the other came against a ranked 2A Tumwater squad. "Our record may not look (great), it's more (about) where we're finishing up," Mury said.

Finishing up should be more manageable as 13thranked Kelso gets deeper into league play and won't be dealing with top-ranked 4A teams anymore. Prairie rematch coming The Hilanders have to go through Prairie again, however. Last season, Kelso split with the Falcons for its only league loss and finished one spot behind them in second place.

This year, the Lassies also lost 2023 TDN All-Area first-team picks Natalie Bair and Olivia Chilton. "They have a lot of offensive threats that are difficult to stop," Mury said about Prairie. "They have a lot of kids that grew up playing volleyball and that's their No.

1 thing. They run a club through the school and have a good feeder program." Kelso has some offensive threats of its own including sophomore Sheena McGregor and junior Royal Grafton, who led the team with eight kills each on Tuesday to go along with two aces and 17 digs, respectively.

Grafton also had 15 kills in a win against Union and 10 kills each against Battle Ground and Tumwater. The junior was the TDN All-Area offensive MVP last season. "Royal is so passionate and so strategic," Mury said.

She is constantly studying the game. She looks at the stats and studies all the tendencies and watches tons of videos on our opponents and of us. She'll draw up heat sheets of where people are hitting.

" Grafton was quick to give credit to her teammates for her accomplishments. "The team playing together, it's really helping me succeed because if we can't have a good pass and we can't have a good set, that's what sets me up," Grafton said. "Even when I play defense, the blockers set a good block up, so we can go to the right spot and get the ball up.

" Delivering those timely passes and sets is senior Halle Johnson. The 2023 TDN All-Area second-team pick and coteam captain this year finished with 13 assists against Prairie and was serving the ball well. She also had 20 assists against Tumwater and 18 against Union.

"She's a servant, she's always setting everyone up," Mury said. "A lot of time setters don't get that praise, but she's been so consistent for us. She's the voice of the team and she's grown a lot in her leadership.

" The senior has gotten used to her new role as team captain. "I really love it because I just get to talk to the team all the time," Johnson said. "I love serving my team, because I just love setting up and running different plays, but I couldn't do it without my defense.

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