On Monday afternoon October 6, Central Kitsap Volleyball took on long standing school rival Olympic High School. Both Central Kitsap Varsity and JV teams ‘clean sweep’ Olympic, winning the matches 3-0. This decades long rivalry means that both teams want to bring home a win to represent their school.

“We gotta win,” CK Player Hanna Taylor said. “It’s the Battle of Bucklin Hill and we are playing for our pride and we wanna represent CK. We also wanna prove that we are better than Oly.”

Practices leading up to rivalry games usually tend to be more intense with the stronger will to win against a fierce opponent. Central Kitsap practice looked a little different knowing that Olympic High School was due next.

“On Friday we had a really solid practice,” Taylor said. “Everyone was locked in, nobody was goofing around. We watched film on the other team and we focused on things we need to do better.”

Some of these players play in Olympic Premier Volleyball Club (OPVBC), meaning that some of them may be in the same uniforms the very next time they see each other. Not only is this match important for representation of the school, but this match means that some of the players are reuniting with middle school teammates and even current club teammates, just on the other side of the net.

“Of course there is a lot of pride on the line because with this match, they are seeing some of the players they went to middle school with so it’s always nice to have bragging rights,” JV Head Coach Rebbecca Arthur said.

In both the JV and Varsity games, there were many kills on the court. For varsity, Taylor (#6 Varsity) scored three kills while on JV Elsa Merry (#6 JV) also scored three kills.

With this win, Central Kitsap continued the momentum into the later half of the season adding a win to the win column making their overall record 7-2.

“Coach Pasi is pretty amazing,” Arthur said. “She knows what she is doing and she knows how to motivate athletes and I think we have a pretty exceptional group of athletes right now.”