At first, it looked like the same story.

Lake Stevens volleyball had lost just one set in its entire non-tournament schedule during the regular season, and swept every playoff matchup leading up to the 4A State Championship against Curtis at the Yakima Valley SunDome on Saturday, but it found itself trailing 2-0 to open the match with no more room for error.

After losing 3-0 in the 2022 State Championship and following up with fourth-place finishes in each of the past two seasons — including an extremely close 3-2 loss to Curtis in last year’s semifinals — Lake Stevens appeared destined to just barely come up short once again.

After coming all this way, is this really how it would end? Not a single person in the purple-and-gold would accept that.

“(I) just encouraged them to believe th

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