Good showing from West Chicago
Julia Conard doesn’t care to think of her West Chicago volleyball team as “under the radar.”
“I don’t want to be under the radar — I want to be on the radar,” laughed West Chicago’s Illinois-bound senior outside. “I think a lot of people are going to underestimate us this year.”
Conard’s Wildcats were challenged Saturday in the Willowbrook Invite championship game, but held off Wheaton Warrenville South 25-15, 23-25, 25-21 to repeat in Villa Park.
West Chicago (6-0) won its first 26 matches last year, as well as conference and regional titles. Now the task is to do it all over again with key pieces graduated.
“We know we have to prove ourself all over again,” West Chicago coach Kris Hasty said. “Hopefully we can win a few tournaments and turn some heads.”
Conard had a match-high 15 kills, her kill off a WW South block giving West Chicago the lead for good at 12-11 in the third set. Conard added another kill as part of a 7-0 run that turned an 11-9 deficit into a 16-11 lead. She later punched in a back-row kill over a block for a big point to make it 21-19 and stem a 4-0 WW South run, and later threw down a hard smash at match point.
“We did get a little test in that second game,” Hasty said. “but we kept our focus and came out with a good win.”
Kate Phalen had 10 kills and 3 aces and Krysta Watts 4 kills and 4 blocks. All four of Watts’ kills came in the third set, her first giving the Tigers an 11-9 lead they couldn’t sustain.
“We were able to get some good things done ourselves against a quality opponent,” WW South coach Bill Schreier said. “We just have to finish. We had control of Game 3 and we let it get away with one service run.”
The Tigers (3-3) did show significant improvement since their first two matches of the week, a one-sided loss at Downers Grove South and a defeat to Willowbrook in the first match of pool play Friday.
Jessica Bossmann had 18 assists and Lilly Kelly 8 digs in Saturday’s final.
“We have kids getting a little bit more comfortable with each other,” Schreier said. “Now we see what we need to work on and now we’ll have to get that work done instead of just talking about it.”
Conard had 6 kills and 2 aces as West Chicago dominated the first set. A Payton Bayless kill pushed the Wildcats ahead 5-4, and they rolled off five straight points from there on Conard’s serve.
The Wildcats struggled at the service line at times, though. West Chicago committed 10 service errors over the first two sets — six in the second. The sixth error of the second set started a 7-2 WW South run that ended it and forced the third set.
“We definitely need to work on our serving — that’s probably our weakest point,” Conard said. “If that’s our weakest point, it’s definitely something that can be fixed.”
Junior Nora Palermo, a newcomer to the West Chicago varsity lineup, had 7 kills, Mary Kate Katarzynski 4 kills, 4 aces and 13 assists and Andrea Skipor 6 kills and 4 blocks to complement Conard at the net.
“We are not just Julia,” Hasty said. “We got a lot more than that.”
Joliet Invite: Glenbard West rallied past Metea Valley 15-25, 25-23, 25-20 to win the championship at Joliet Central. In three matches Saturday Caleigh Ryan had 58 assists, Megan Wagner 21 kills, Amanda Perry 19 kills, Charlotte Karp 19 kills and 8 blocks and Meg DeMaar 38 digs for the Hilltoppers (12-0), who won their second tournament in as many weeks.