Opels sees fine effort from Meadows

Janet Opels was given medical clearance to sit on the bench with her team at this weekend’s Early Bird tournament hosted by Conant and Fremd.

The Rolling Meadows girls volleyball coach for the past 20 years underwent knee surgery at Northwest Community Hospital on Tuesday.

“It’s been hard,” she said of the last week. “I haven’t been able to give my team all my time and they kind of feed off my energy and enthusiasm.”

Well, Opels returned with crutches this weekend and her Mustangs must have been happy to have her back.

For the first time in years, they ended up in the winner’s pool and took fourth place with a 2-3 record.

“It’s really hard,” Opels said about sitting still on the bench. “I’m one who likes to pace. But my assistant (Roy Olson) has been wonderful helping out this week.”

The Mustangs notched wins over Elk Grove and fifth-place finisher Fremd to win Friday’s pool play. They fell to powerful St. Charles East (runner-up) and Pius (Milwaukee) on Saturday.

“There were a lot of positives this weekend,” Opels said. “Even though we are 2-5 overall, we brought home some hardware and we had some bright spots.”

Opel likes the way her setters (senior Olivia Falk and sophomore Jenny Vliet) have been playing.

Vliet (59 assists, 203 attempts) had to run a 5-1 offense on Saturday.

“She did a nice job,” Opels aid.” That was the good news. The bad part was that without Olivia, we didn’t have Jenny in the front row.”

Opels said senior Veronica Drabowski, who had a team-high 40 digs in tourney, was very effective in Friday’s night pool play.

Junior middle blocker Rachel Mickey led the Mustangs with 22 kills in the tourney, followed by Drabowski (14), Morgan Keller (10), Ashley Montanez (6), Vliet (6) and Amy Wenzel (5).

Drabowski also collected a team-high 13 blocks.

Wenzel recorded 32 digs in the back row while Natalie Cannizzo had 24 and Abbey Hill 20.

“We’re still young,” Opels said. “We’re learning the pace of the game, defense and reading things.”

The Mustangs pulled out a tight 26-27, 25-23, 17-16 triumph over Fremd in pool play on Friday.

“Meadows just played so consistent,” said Fremd coach Curt Pinley. “It was side-out, side-out all the way. We just missed a few opportunities and they took advantage.”

Fremd’s big win was a three-game victory over Palatine in the semifinals of the second-place pool. The Vikings avenged a three-game loss to the Pirates just two days earlier.

“The girls learned a lot from the first time we played them,” Pinley said. “We knew the match was to get the champions of the second flight, so they said ‘let’s do it.’ ”

The Vikes (6-3) were led on attack by Rebecca Clarke (29 kills), Nicole Obos (19), Jessie Widemann (18) and Claire Brady (13). Marilyn Lortz handed out 82 assists from 291 sets.

Junior Nina Scott led the Vikes with 19 digs.

“We just really had a team effort and talked on the floor a lot better than we did on Thursday (against Palatine),” said Scott, who was 54-of-54 serving. “We really focused a lot on our serve because we missed a lot against Palatine.”

Senior Taryn Lempa led the Vikes with 6 aces while Clarke and freshman Lane Hindenburg had 3 apiece.

Fremd took fifth place with a 25-21, 25-16 win over Resurrection. Clarke put down the winning kill in Set 1.

“We kept our energy level up,” Clarke said. “We didn’t have any gaps. If we got a good run, we didn’t let them back into it. We had a lot of good blocking, picked up everything and had good communication.”

Ÿ Palatine (4-3) took eighth place with a 2-3 record. Junior Taylor

Ÿ Hoffman Estates (3-8) placed 10th as Becca Stoczynski (20 kills), Becky Knapik (20) and Destinee Young (12) led the Hawks’ attack.

Ÿ Schaumburg (4-3) took 11th place as Kelly Koutnik (25 kills, 38 digs) and Bria Hailey (21 kills, 21 blocks) paced the attack.

Ÿ Elk Grove wound up 12th out of the 16 teams and is now 2-6 for the season.

Ÿ Conant (2-6) placed 15th as Jenn Donnell and Morgan Peterson each put down 21 kills. Rachael Yordon led the Cougars with 63 digs.

Jacobs tourney: Hersey seniors Kristen Pedersen (42 kills, 32 digs) and Kelsey Haas (28 kills, 16 digs) were named to the all-tourney team as the Huskies (6-2) took seventh place out of 12 teams.

“We’re a much better team than we were when we started the tournament,” said Hersey coach Nancy Lill. “We improved in great ways.”

After a tough three-set loss to Waukesha Catholic, the Huskies fell to Rockford Boylan in three games after defeating the Titans earlier in the day.

“We had our ups and downs,” Lill said. “After the tough match with Waukesha, we didn’t come out ready for Rockford Boylan. but we bounced back against Crystal Lake Central.”

Cary-Grove won the title over Stevenson.