St. Charles East sweeps Geneva
Something had to give when Geneva and St. Charles East's girls volleyball teams put their undefeated Upstate Eight Conference River Division records on the line Tuesday in St. Charles.
It ended up being Geneva's record that gave, and how convincingly the Saints did it had their home gym buzzing long after their straight set win.
St. Charles East scored the final six points of Game 1 to win 25-22, then never trailed in a dominating 25-15 victory in Game 2.
The win puts St. Charles East (16-5, 4-0) in the River lead by a half game over Geneva (16-3, 4-1). The Saints have two matches left against St. Charles North and Larkin.
"We've been looking forward to this game for awhile," Saints junior outside Avery Macklin said. "We just had to stay focused on our court, not worry about the fans, just focus on each other and play for each other."
Geneva is coming off the first sectional title in school history and returns a pair of Big Ten recruits, Grace Loberg (Wisconsin) and Kelsey Wicinski (Maryland).
But the Vikings came unglued down the stretch of Game 1, then never recovered in the second.
"When we play good volleyball we're tough to beat," Geneva coach Annie Seitelman said. "Tonight wasn't one of those nights."
While the teams were tied 10 times in the first game, the Vikings led for most of it. They took their biggest lead at 14-9 on the third of Camille Kolquist's service points.
After the Saints battled back to tie at 18 and then go up 19-18 on a booming swing from Megan Schildmeyer, Geneva scored four straight including two heads-up plays at the net by middle Maddie Courter to lead 22-19.
A service error gave the Saints the serve back, and Schildmeyer fired five straight for the win. After a Macklin kill, Kyla Augustine tipped for another winner, Schildmeyer served an ace and the Vikings hit wide on game point.
"They are not nervous anymore," St. Charles East coach Jennie Kull said. "They aren't nervous on those points anymore. That's a huge growing step. They don't ever panic."
The lefty Macklin slammed a kill for a 2-0 lead early in Game 2, the start of a near perfect game that saw the Geneva serve-receive break down and lead to one easy Saints point after another.
"You did not see a great showing from Geneva volleyball tonight," Seitelman said. "A lot of unforced errors. They did a nice job of taking us out of our system, making us predictable on offense. They are a really good team. I wish we could have made it more competitive but I think at the end it became a little more mental for us."
Loberg had 5 of her 6 kills late in the second game including kills on both points immediately after a Seitelman timeout. But it was too little, too late, and after Schildmeyer set Augustine for point No. 24, Mikaela Mosquera ended the match with a kill.
Anne Hughes led both teams with 15 digs including keeping a couple of rockets from Loberg from hitting the floor. Schildmeyer was everywhere with 8 kills, 7 digs and 9 assists, Macklin and Augustine both had 5 kills, and Morgan Kull had 9 assists.
"There wasn't one person tonight who didn't get the job done," Jennie Kull said. "We knew they were going to focus on Mikaela so everyone else had to step up and they did."
Loberg tied Hannah Lanasa for Geneva's kill lead with 6. Ally Barrett had 5 kills, Megan Cameron 11 assists and Wicinski 8 digs.
"Volleyball is a game of momentum. When things aren't going your way it is tough to rebound from that," Seitelman said. "We never really got on a long service run to build momentum back in our favor.
"We'll use this match as a learning opportunity. You never want to lose like this but I would rather it happen now than the end of October. There's things we can learn from."