I am not sure if anyone besides me has noticed, but we are lucky and blessed here on the Plateau and the valley below when it comes to watching high school girls participate – and often excel – in sporting events.

It has been an exceedingly entertaining pastime because the White River girls basketball team, the Bonney Lake fastpitch squad, the Enumclaw basketball and volleyball teams and the Sumner High girls soccer and volleyball contingents really have consistently been terrific.

We may not have any semi-pro or professional women’s teams like the Dockside Dames (of hard-hitting roller derby renown) or the one-time world champion Seattle Storm.

Hasn’t it been at least a little bit fun though, to watch some of the local high school girls sports teams kicking it during this early fall season in volleyball, cross country, golf and soccer just to name a few?

In some of the girls’ sports, at least a few of the ones that I’ve been responsible for covering, there are teams that are still boasting untarnished accountings in league play.

The Bonney Lake volleyball squad for example is undefeated in the SPSL 3A, having lost only once in 13 encounters so far, with that one five set hiccup coming to Spanaway Lake, a non-league challenger.

Then there is White River’s volleyball six-pack, whose solitary setback of the 2011 campaign, thus far, came to the Interlake High Saints, also a nonleague opponent.

Now, this may shock some of you Courier-Herald readers, but I do love watching other sports besides football, basketball and baseball.

I besieged our editor to let me have the Sumner High girls soccer crew under my surveillance.

Maybe it is because I am not a true student of the game of soccer, but when people ask me if I like soccer, my usual response probably parrots the answer given by most mainstream sports enthusiasts: “I would like the sport of soccer more if there were more scccoooooring. I like to be entertained and a 1-0 triumph by our Sounders FC is so dang boooorrring that it gets me a-snnooooring.”

It is human nature I suppose, dating back to when the Roman citizens witnessed the bloody carnage provided by the gladiator slaves or were spell-bound by watching the speeding chariots as they raced around the dirt track of the coliseum floor.

I have had the pleasure of watching the Spartan ladies lighting up opposing goalies on numerous occasions through the years, as there has usually been scoring aplenty. During the 2011 campaign, the purple clad kickers of Spartanville are 10-0 in SPSL 2A action and it looks as though the playoffs may be awaiting once more.

Sumner is currently averaging five goals per encounter and surrendering a paltry average of one tally per tilt.

The only thing that bothers me a little bit about Sumner’s soccer corps is the dreaded tease factor.

In the past half decade, the Sparts have mowed down the competition on SPSL 3A and 2A battlefields, but then, when they’ve reached the second season…not so much. They always seem to smash the Ferrari into a stone wall when some one-hit-wonder meanders onto the playoff stage like it did last year.

But that’s just it! I was at that very meeting on that cold and rainy afternoon last November in Sunset Chev Stadium, when the Wolves of Sehome scored that fateful goal in the last minutes, that sunk Sumner’s post season aspirations.

I saw the tears streaming down the cheeks of especially the seniors, who had to face the cold, stark reality that this had been their last, best chance at gleaning the coveted class 2A girls soccer state championship.

The true treat for me though is taking in the high school volleyball matches, in which the ultimate reward for the epic individual athletic endeavors is the betterment of the squad. Witness the downtrodden Enumclaw team, which received the unwelcome news recently that natural-born volleyballer HayleeMae Dennis was lost for at least the regular season to an ankle injury she sustained while chasing after a stray ball hit into the hazardous stands.

Despite the loss of their best player and one of only two seniors, they were not deterred in the journey toward the postseason and I for one found that to be a most admirable and commendable team trait.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that their coach is Jackie Carel, who has soldiered on as the volleyball boss at EHS for a quarter of a century and as a result has encountered and dealt with nearly every possible volleyball variable.

I hate to bring up anything about boys sports in a column that has delved mostly into girls sports, but I won’t have any editorial voice for a while, so here I go.

This is a shootout to anyone who has anything to do with chipping in their two cents on the 3A football polls. Do you think that with Halloween rapidly approaching, those pumpkin-headed Lancers of Lakes High (they of the orange helmets) could possibly sit atop of the heap for just one week?

In their past two encounters, those lusty Lancers have wrapped duct tape around the jaws of Decatur’s Gators backhanding them 61-0, and most recently hosted a pretty good Enumclaw Hornet squad and took a flamethrower to the Hornet’s nest, annihilating them 69-0.

That is the type of domination in the SPSL 3A nation that deserves a No. 1 ranking.