Volleyball Travel Delayed, Forces Forfeit

Brianna Gibbs/KMXT

            Kodiak’s recent rain streak has kept many folks from flying to and from the island, including some of the community’s young athletes. The Kodiak High School Volleyball Team was scheduled to fly out Wednesday morning for the 4A State Volleyball Tournament, but when the flight was cancelled, coaches and school administrators had to look at other options.
             The team ended up catching the State Ferry Tustumena and arrived in Homer Thursday morning. However, with a match scheduled at 1 p.m. in Anchorage, the team was on a tight timeline to make their first round of tournament play against South Anchorage. It takes about four hours to get to Anchorage from Homer. When it started to look like they weren’t going to make the 1 p.m. play time, JV Coach Merissa Koller said South’s coaches lobbied to push the match until 3 p.m. She said they were very generous with Kodiak, and even offered to pay some of the team’s travel expenses.
                Unfortunately, the match wasn’t postponed and Kodiak ended up having to forfeit when they couldn’t make it in time. This pushed them down to the loser’s bracket of the double elimination tournament, before they even touched a volleyball.
                The team made it to Anchorage early this evening, so they will be able to play Friday against Fairbanks’ West Valley at 1 p.m. West Valley lost to Colony in an upset today.
                 Koller said the girls are bummed they missed their opening round, but happy they didn’t miss the tournament all together. She said they know they’ll need to fight their way out of the loser’s bracket and come back from the travel hiccups.