In the cooling nights of autumn, when high school life is all about smash mouth football, another team is ready to do some smashing of its own. With a volleyball, that is.

The Garfield Volleydogs are off and running into a new year that promises to be littered with the success whose groundwork was laid out last year. The graduation of the league MVP, senior captain Laura Washington, is a tough loss, but the team is more ready than ever to make a run at its first state birth since joining KingCo 4A in 1997.

Senior captains Alix Toothman and Laura Shaw head a team that headlines 2002 All-KingCo 2nd Team member Cat Juson and 2002 All-KingCo Honorable Mention Lillie Cohn. Together they are poised to erase any lingering memories of the winless days of the past and only build on the new tradition that this team has created.

Coach Leslie Hamann said she expects this year’s team to be very competitive. They are taller, play at a higher skill level, and are loaded with experience, much of which came from the run the team made last year. That run took the Volleydogs into the KingCo District playoffs where they fell just short of a state berth.

“We definitely have a very good team here,” Hamann said. “We have good kids coming up and good kids already here. I look for us to do very well this year and state is definitely a reachable goal.”

The players are excited about this year, maybe even more than their coach.

“Our team chemistry is excellent,” said junior Cat Juson. “We are all just really excited and pumped for this year. We expect to do well.”

That seems to be the consensus around the team. The chemistry is as good as it’s ever been and the newcomers have fit in perfectly. Sophomores Molly Swenson and Chelle Ticeson are the big newcomers fitting into the varsity system and so far everyone is doing well.

“Our main goal here is to have fun,” said Juson. “And our chemistry makes it so much easier to do that and be successful at the same time.”

Right now the Volleydogs are just hitting the ball at each other, but KingCo conference beware, we play smash mouth volleyball in the Garfield house.