Kingston ended its regular season losing four of its last five games, including the final match at home against Sequim 3-1.

“We had a pretty solid season,” coach Chris Eaton said. “We were locked into the second or third over a week ago. We did the work to get ourselves into a playoff position but we want to do more things.”

The Buccaneers finished third out of the 2A schools in the Olympic League, fourth overall, with a record of 7-9. Although Kingston struggled at the end of the season, the Buccaneers will make the district tournament. According to the RPI rankings, Kingston is expected to be in between a 10 to 13 seed out of 16 teams.

“We will be in the bottom half,” Eaton said. “It means we got to win three in a row. We will have to beat two teams similar to Sequim. However, we have won sets and had runs of points.”

The Bucs battled Sequim to the wire with scores of 25-22, 16-25, 19-25 and 20-25. Besides the second set, Kingston remained within six points of Sequim the entire match.

“Our greatest strength is our heart,” Eaton said. “We will make a couple of mistakes and get down but this team has yet to fail to rally. Our greatest strength is they can come together when they are down and put together a streak of points.”

The Bucs were able to do that in the first set against Sequim when they trailed 14-9. Quiterie Lemieux piled up four aces while Taizah Franklin earned a couple of blocks to give Kingston the lead. Yet, Kingston will look at the losses during their recent match and learn from their mistakes.

“We need to experience these losses and learn how we can lean on our strengths,” Eaton said. “Sequim did a great job staying in their system and kept us on our heels. We are right there, and these girls put so much heart, and we will see next week if we can take that next step and put a whole game together.”

Corynn Heuer of Kingston tips the ball over the net.