Cary-Grove's growth continues at Prairie Ridge Invite

Same coaches. Same building. Far different stakes.

The last time girls volleyball teams coached by Barrington's Michelle Jakubowski and Cary-Grove's Patty Langanis met was in 2011, when Langanis' Trojans defeated an injury weakened Huntley squad — then coached by Jakubowski — to win the Class 4A Prairie Ridge sectional title.

“Right over there,” Jakubowski said, nodding to the main gym where the 2011 playoffs were contested. “Amazing match.”

Jakubowski stepped away from coaching after that night and became Huntley's athletic director for the next two years. Unable to shake the coaching bug, she returned to the game this fall at Barrington and is in the process of taming an extremely young herd of Fillies. Barrington's roster of 17 includes four sophomores and two freshman.

Playing without their only senior, setter Annie Rolecek, who missed 4 of the 5 matches while taking the ACT on Saturday morning, Barrington (3-12) went 0-5 against top competition at the Prairie Ridge Invitational. But unlike in 2011, Saturday's goal was simply to improve, not secure an Elite Eight berth.

“This is about getting better every day so in October we're at our best,” Jakubowski said. “I tell the girls it's only failure if you stay down. As long as you get back up, you didn't fail.”

Crystal Lake Central looked October-ready in sweeping its 5 matches to win the invite and improve to 14-0 overall. In their final match of the day, the Tigers edged Prairie Ridge 27-25 in the first set and rallied from a 10-3 deficit to win the second 25-21.

“We started to do some little things right on our side and started placing the ball differently,” CL Central coach Lisa Reddish said of the comeback against Prairie Ridge (8-2).

Cary-Grove (10-4) went 3-2 at the invitational, losing in straight sets to both Prairie Ridge and CL Central.

The Trojans bounced back to win their final 2 matches. Against Batavia, they won 9 of the final 11 points to complete a 25-23, 25-21 victory. Against Barrington, they snapped a 15-15, second-set tie to prevail 25-22, 25-20.

“I think we learned a lot about ourselves, what dynamic works for us and what doesn't,” said Cary-Grove libero Bree Coffey, committed to play Big Ten volleyball at Rutgers. “I think the biggest thing for us right now is we need to learn how to pick each other up and not fall down. We've done that in the past, but we need to learn to do it consistently. This was a big step forward for us.”

Common threads were woven through Cary-Grove's victories. And its defeats.

“When our ball control and our serve receive are on, we become a really tough team because our offense is dynamic when we're in system,” Langanis said. “But when we're playing tight with teams, typically we're missing serves and we're shanking passes on serve receive and we become a very beatable team. In all of those runs, the girls kind of stepped up. They had kind of a tough day. It was good to see their perseverance.”

St. Charles East (14-3) ran into some adversity in the first set against eventual champion CL Central.

“The score said 17-17, but it should have been 18-15. The score was wrong and we were up,” Saints coach Jennie Kull said of an eventual first-set loss in a 25-23, 25-14 defeat. “Emotionally, we got frustrated and didn't focus on what we needed to. We had a tough time regrouping after that. It was a good lesson for us to learn.”

St. Charles East also lost a 3-setter to Cary-Grove, but 6-foot-1 middle hitter Mikaela Mosquera and the Saints finished 3-2 at the invite, thanks to wins over Prairie Ridge (25-21, 25-18), Barrington (25-13, 25-19) and Batavia (25-11, 25-18).

“I couldn't be more excited about how they did this weekend against tough Cary-Grove, tough Crystal Lake and Prairie Ridge,” Kull said. “It was fun because I got to see a lot of great things. I'm pleased with how we played.”

The only win for Batavia came against Barrington (25-16, 25-12).

“Even though our record wasn't very good today I feel like our playing was the best it's been this season,” Batavia co-captain Anna Clausen said. “Some parts of the game weren't as strong as the others, but I feel like we made a big step this weekend.”

The Bulldogs (5-10) departed Crystal Lake encouraged after pushing sets to the limit against CL Central (25-23) and Prairie Ridge (26-24).

“Two weeks ago we probably wouldn't have been able to compete with them as well,” Batavia middle hitter Jancy Lundberg said. “It shows how hard we've been working in practice.”