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Ready, willing and Zabel: BHS bags IML crown

Inspired Wolverines take title back from Alamosa, honor superintendent

"Zabel Strong!" was the team's collective shout prior to Tuesday night's fourth game.

Zabel-strong was what they'd have to be against an opponent primed to pull off a win similar to last year's meeting inside the same building. And having just lost Game 3, the Bayfield players knew it.

"We had a fire lit under our butts because they showed up with 'Undefeated' signs last year - without even knowing the results," said junior Sydney Gabbard, recalling Alamosa's five-game stunner in 2015 inside BHS Gymnasium. "There was a big talk in that huddle we had between those sets: We don't want to replay last year. We didn't want that to happen; we knew that we needed to finish."

"We started playing to avoid a loss and not to win," senior Miranda Talbot said. "And any time we do that, we know how the result is going to be."

Coming off sweeps of Monte Vista and Centauri last Saturday at MVHS, the Wolverines' x-factor against the Mean Moose may well have been Bayfield School District Superintendent Troy Zabel. Recognized during a pre-match ceremony for his ongoing fight against an uncommon type of brain cancer, Zabel was on the bench as an honorary assistant to Head Coach Terene Foutz, and he was never far from the athletes' minds.

"It almost gives us a new level of intensity, that 'OK we're not just playing to avoid a loss. We're not playing just to win,'" Talbot said. "We're playing for somebody else, win or lose! And this means something to him, that we've dedicated it to him."

Once Bayfield completed a crazed scramble to tie the score at 13-13, then out-fought AHS to take a 21-18 lead, Talbot checked in to serve for junior Kylee McCoy and proceeded to set off a bench-clearing celebration of which Zabel had the most ideal view.

"It was a huge deal looking to Terene tonight; she's taught us a lot about how to play in the clutch," said Talbot. "She's telling you where to serve, because she knows where the weakest passer's going to be. And we work on it every day in practice - you serve to the weakest passer."

Dealt with a moderate degree of heat, Talbot's first serve couldn't be passed cleanly and caromed into the back wall, making the score 22-18. Talbot's next offering hooked the opposite direction and landed perfectly on the sideline near BHS' wild 'Rowdy Crowd' without as much as an attempt made to come up with it. 23-18.

Talbot's third serve was playable, but Alamosa sophomore Chloe Bolt thwacked an opportunity long to bring up match point. Talbot - undoubtedly dreaming of making the most perfect serve yet in her career -

somehow forced her fourth consecutive try through the top of the net and into vacated space nearest the strings.

"Even though it was just a botched play, completely," laughed Gabbard, following Bayfield's 25-20, 25-18, 21-25, 25-18 triumph, "we didn't relive what happened last year. We wanted to win for Zabel."

"It's really, really important when we're playing for somebody other than ourselves," Talbot stated. "Last year, we won two, they won in the third, we let them come back, and they beat us for the IML. This time we knew that was not going to be the end. It was huge that we came back."

"The greater values of sport are transcended by the greater values of life," Terene Foutz had stressed in an e-mail informing media of the match's unique October significance, where all pink-minded patrons would instead be wearing as much Wolverine purple as possible for one of their own. "This one's for Troy!"

Ranked #6 in this week's CHSAANow.com Class 3A poll, the Wolverines (14-3, 9-0) hosted #9 Pagosa Springs (14-3, 7-2) last night, having reclaimed the Intermountain throne from last fall's usurpers with a match to spare. Results were unavailable at press time.

"We proved ourselves," Gabbard said. "Now is the next step on our 'staircase.' We've had this big image of a staircase on our whiteboard and it's like this, then (undefeated in the) IML, regionals. We want State so bad!"

"We've all been to State and regionals as, freshmen, sophomores, with a whole different team," Talbot said. "This team, specifically, has never been to State, never won regionals, never won the IML together! This is brand-new territory; we're ready to take it!"