Vischer, Wheaton Academy put away St. Edward

For the past couple weeks Wheaton Academy outside hitter Sydney Vischer has been nursing a sore shoulder.

It was clearly feeling a lot better on Thursday night. Vischer knocked down 11 kills to lead the Warriors to a 25-19, 25-19 Metro Suburban West girls volleyball win at St. Edward.

Wheaton Academy (19-8, 6-2) is now alone in second place in the MSC West. chasing but still within striking distance of undefeated Glenbard South, which the Warriors beat in a tournament earlier in the year.

Samantha Krill added 5 kills for the Warriors. Alicia Funk had 15 assists and 2 aces. Jessica Bosse finished with a team-high 10 digs.

The Warriors had logged a heavy load with tournaments 4 straight weekends until finally getting a break this past weekend. The busy schedule had taken its toll on Vischer, but the time off this weekend did a world of good.

"I felt a lot better tonight," Vischer said. "It had just been real sore, but I played through it. I was finally able to rest it some and tonight I felt like I was finally able to swing away with it."

With the score tied 13-13 in Game 1 Vischer took over spiking 3 kills during a 10-1 run for the Warriors that broke the game open.

"She is definitely our go-to player and our team captain," Wheaton Academy coach DA Nichols said. "We rely on her both on the offensive and defensive side. There are just times when she takes over and carries us. She gave us a big lift again tonight."

Wheaton Academy jumped out to a 7-2 lead in Game 2 with the help of aces from Funk and Vischer and never looked back. The Warriors opened their biggest lead of Game 2 with a 9-2 run that extended the lead to 18-9.

"We had our energy back tonight," Nichols said. "Speed is one of our strengths and we were a lot quicker than we have been the last few matches and we were able to take advantage of that. The ball control was a lot better and with that we were able to get a lot more one-on-one situations at the net."

St. Edward (11-6, 5-3) had taken Wheaton Academy to 3 games in a match earlier in the year, but could never quite find any rhythm this time around.

The Green Wave were just 16 of 27 (59 percent) on kill attempts and had 10 other unforced errors.

"We really struggled tonight," St. Edward coach Jaime Dovichi said. "We were just out of sync. It starts with our serve receive. The passing was off and we just couldn't get into the offense. It's something we really need to improve on."

Dominique Washington and Megan Barth each had 5 kills to lead the Wave. Casey Gredzieleski added 2 aces and a team-high 5 assists.