Recently, Bellevue College hosted a crossover tournament involving four of the best teams in Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges. The teams: Bellevue, Olympic, Blue Mountain Tacoma and Big Bend. The tournament was a huge success. The tournament lasted Oct. 18 and 19.
BC’s team started off their impressive run on Friday with a match against Centralia, winning three straight games (25-11, 25-14, 25-18) to move on.
The next team the girls faced was the team from Clackamas. This was a bigger challenge for BC as they played four games going 2-2 (28-26, 24-26, 20-25, 25-19) then winning the tie-breaker game (15-11) to proceed to the semi-finals.
The next round started on Saturday with BC matched against top ranked Blue Mountain. BC had a dominating win over Blue Mountain needing only three games (25-21, 25-18, 25-20) to set down the top ranked team. This win moved BC into the finals of the tournament where they went against Olympic for the title. While BC’s team put up a strong fight, they ended up losing to Olympic in three games (25-17, 25-20, 27-25), giving Olympic the title for the Tournament.
BC Athletic Director Bill O’Connor said, “I think it is great for our program and hopefully it is going to pay off in big dividends when we get into the NWAACC tournament.”
O’Connor added, “I am so pleased with the progress of this team, their recruiting with Kim [Culliton] and her staff have done to bring in some players from all over the state of Washington State to put them all together. They all seem to like each other which is such a critical part of a successful season is [that] you play well together and you support each other.”
While the BC girls didn’t take home the title, they did have a great experience playing against some of the best teams in the NWAACC and this should help them in their journey to a NWAACC title.