Shadle’s new digs

While all eyes have been on the Mead Panthers and Lewis and Clark Tigers the past two seasons, another Greater Spokane League volleyball team has been lurking in the shadows.

Meet the Shadle Park Highlanders

They sneaked into the 4A regional tournament two seasons ago as the sixth-seeded dark horse out of districts and ended up clicking at the right time and finishing eighth at the State 4A tournament.

“It was our Cinderella team,” Shadle coach Brooke Cooper said.

Last season there were higher expectations for Shadle to make a postseason run. The Highlanders rose to the occasion and improved to a fifth-place finish at state, and this year they remain a formidable GSL opponent.

The difference, though, is come playoff time they will be competing to go to a different state tournament. Shadle and Rogers joined Mt. Spokane, East Valley and North Central in the 3A classification.

“It feels a little different,” senior setter Lindsay Niemeier said after the Highlanders swept Rogers on Tuesday night in a non-league contest.

“At the same time we are still playing for the same thing – we still play to go to state. We still have tough competition. We still want to win and there’s still the passion to win. I think it’s really exciting.”

This season is also exciting for Cooper – for a couple of different reasons.

Cooper coached Niemeier, libero Kaylee Rector and outside hitters Amy Before and Nikki Urquhart – her talented senior leadership core – along with junior middle blocker Sasha Mitchell, to a ninth-place finish at the 12U club nationals in Phoenix when the four seniors were in the sixth grade.

The junior class of Highlanders – outside hitters Ashlyn Hayes, Mackenzie Grimes and Quinn Laurie, setter Katelyn Harvey and Mitchell – have all played together for a number of years as well.

“It’s been so much fun to see what they’ve been able to do,” Cooper said of her seniors. “It’s really just great to sit back and watch how over the years they’ve grown together.”

Though this year, “grown” is a relative term. It’s certainly not literal for the Highlanders, who are much shorter than in years past, Cooper said.

Niemeier, Mitchell and sophomore Kendall Vesneske are the tallest of the bunch, listed at 5-foot-11. Two players – Hayes and Urquhart – are 5-10 and seven players are 5-9 or shorter. But, as Cooper pointed out, they can still lay the hits down on teams, courtesy of scrappy defense and a subsequently quicker offense.

“Defensively, we’re probably a lot quicker and a lot better than we have been in the past few years, so that helps us run a quicker offense,” Cooper said. “That’s kind of our strategy right now because we’re not as tall as we used to be.”

The Highlanders will get to see right away what they’re made of. Tonight, in a league opener, they will take on East Valley, a team expected to make an impact.

Shadle travels to EV for the 7 p.m. contest with the Knights, who are fresh off winning the Auburn Mountain View tournament last weekend. The Highlanders were fourth at the tournament.

“They’re going to be tough – they are a scrappy, hard-hitting team and they’ve got a little bit of everything,” Cooper said. “I’m excited for (EV coach Jim Dorr) – he deserves it.”

And with the spotlight focused on perennial powers Mead and LC the last two seasons (and likely will this season, too, as they continue to be the teams to beat) – Shadle deserves some recognition for hanging in and representing the always-competitive GSL well at the state level.

They hope they can do the same thing this season at the 3A level.

“I really kind of think on any given night it could be who shows up,” Cooper said of competition throughout the league. “I think Mead and LC are still a little step above everybody else, but there are some teams out there who will be surprisingly good.

“But it’s going to be a battle. It always is.”