After dropping a pair of games by a combined four points Thursday night, the coaching stagg for the Douglas volleyball team really only had one question for their players.
Do you want to dance?
"It's this thing where if we go undefeated during the week, we get to dance during the Monday practice instead of do conditioning," said Douglas setter Megan Mitchell, who led the team with 47 assists. 22 service points and six aces.
Apparently, it was incentive enough.
Douglas swept through the final three games to escape with a 23-25, 24-26, 25-14, 25-20, 15-10 win over a very talented Truckee squad in the Tigers' home-opener.
"Truckee is definitely a great team," Douglas coach Suzi Townsell said. "That's why we wanted to play them. We just weren't relaxed the first couple of games. We weren't playing Douglas volleyball. We told them just to take it one play at a time.
"They put it together when they had to and that is a good quality to have."
Douglas has gone five games, four games and five games in its last three matches, which came against defending regional champs Reno (4A), Whittell (2A) and Truckee (3A) respectively. So apparently, even though the team will get out of conditioning on Monday, those sessions have already proven valuable early in the season.
"I don't if they are just trying to show off their conditioning or what," Townsell said with a laugh. "I don't know what gets these girls going other than playing five games, apparently."
Mitchell echoed those sentiments.
"We just like to play, I guess," she said. " We're not tired by the fifth game, so what we do in conditioning is paying off."
Douglas dug itself into a deep hole to start the match as Truckee raced out to a 4-0 lead and later stretched it to 10-4.
The Tigers went on a 5-1 run to close the gap to 11-7, but they committed a total of eight service errors, many a critical points in the game, which proved to be too much to overcome.
"It was our serves that first game," Townsell said. "That has to get better."
Facing game point at 24-18, Douglas did fight back to within two before Truckee put it away.
The Wolverines got out to a 5-0 lead to open the second game, but Douglas came back within three points at 13-9 before going on an impressive 9-0 run to take an 18-13 lead.
Truckee called a timeout, however, made up the difference and escaped with their second win thanks in part to a pair of Tiger service errors at key moments.
For the match, Douglas committed nearly a game's worth of service errors at 22.
During the break, assistant coach JoJo Townsell put it simply.
"We took their best shot, not let's give them ours," he said.
Douglas ran off a quick 4-0 run to open the third as Mitchell connected with junior Jourdan Burke twice and once with senior Jessica Waggoner for a monsterous kill down the middle.
An ace by Mitchell, sandwiched around a Truckee sideout by a kill from Taryn Williams worked the score to 5-1, and Douglas was off.
The Tigers pushed ahead to a 19-8 lead and benefitted from a series of five consecutive errors on Truckee's part to take the game.
Burke and Williams tied for the team lead in kills at 16, while Waggoner wasn't far behind at 14.
Waggoner also put up 20 blocks in the match, despite sitting out during the first game.
Mitchell distributed five times to Burke and four times to Williams in the fourth and then opened the fifth with two consecutive aces.
She found Burke and Waggoner three times each and Williams twice in the fifth to propel Douglas to the win.
Also in the match, Christine DuPuis had five kills, Shannon Dugan had four, Rebecca Antti had three and Mitchell and Bryanna Schinzing each had two.
Burke, Schinzing and Mitchell each tallied seven blocks, Antti had three, DuPuis two and Williams one.
Mysta Townsell led the team with 18 digs, Mia Townsell and Mitchell each had five, DuPuis and Jordan Marsh each had three, Antti and Waggoner each had two and Burke had one.
Williams finished with two aces and Burke and Mysta Townsell each had one.
Mia Townsell had three assists while Dugan, Waggoner and Burke each had one.
Mysta Townsell finished with 11 service points, Burke had nine, Waggoner had six, Williams five, Antti four, Dugan two and Jackie Harper had two.
Douglas improved to 12-0 with the win and will host Fallon Tuesday in the league-opener for both schools.
Both the Douglas JV and freshman squad took 2-0 victories over Truckee Thursday.
