For the third time in the last three seasons, the Rainier High School volleyball team qualified for the 2B state tournament. The Mountaineers swept Kalama on Saturday, Nov. 4 at Adna High School to punch their ticket to the tournament, where they earned a No. 9 seed.
The Mountaineers (15-6, 7-2 C2BL) fell short in the third-place game against Napavine on Saturday after their win over Kalama, but their spot in the tournament was already secured.
“It feels pretty great. We’ve been working hard all season, and our goal was to make it to state,” head coach Carrie Ooms said. “We went from having to rebuild a program and kind of start from scratch last year, and where we’re at now, they feel that they can compete with some of the top teams in the state.”
Entering the 2023 tournament, the Mountaineers aimed to place in state for the first time in the program’s history, according to Ooms. They faced the eighth seed, River View (19-1, 8-0 Eastern Washington Athletic Conference), to open the tournament on Wednesday, Nov. 8 at Yakima SunDome in Yakima. Results were not available as of press time, but a win by Rainier and a win by No. 1 seed Adna (18-0, 9-0 C2BL) would set the Mountaineers up for a rematch with the Pirates, a team that has bested them twice in the last two weeks.
“I’m just really proud of the girls. They’ve worked really hard all season to get here, and it would be great if we could place and prove to them how much their hard work has paid off,” Ooms said.
Rainier is led by four All-C2BL honorees, including first-teamer Acacia Murphy, second-teamer Allyson Ooms and honorable mentions Brooklynn Swenson and Janess Blackburn.
