St. Francis wins, but Batavia happy too
Pretty much everyone left St. Francis' Peg Kopec Court smiling Thursday night.
The host Spartans notched win No. 29 and celebrated Hawaiian Night with a good crowd, the school's pep band and a well-known alum on hand. Even visiting Batavia left on a high note after taking the nationally ranked program to three games.
St. Francis won the nonconference match 25-11, 23-25, 25-11 to take a 29-4 record into next week's regular-season finale. The Spartans look primed to make a strong run at a third straight Class 3A championship.
"It's really exciting, especially when people come out to watch it gets us excited," said Spartans setter Daniele Messa, who helped knock off the Bulldogs with both her strong setting and some nasty serving. "I think we'll do well (in the playoffs). We're trying to finish our regular season strong to motivate us."
With a pair of tall and powerful outsides in Kamryn Malloy and Molly Haggerty getting off to fast starts, St. Francis stormed out to leads of 12-3 and 17-4 en route to taking the opener. Batavia (9-19), however, put up a big block and libero Maddie Jaudon led an inspired defense as the visitors took the second game.
St. Francis coach Peg Kopec didn't use all of her best players in the second game, but that didn't take away from how well the Bulldogs played. Jaudon had a match-high 16 digs, and Anna Clausen paced Batavia with 6 kills.
"We're 9-19, but we don't play like 9-19," Batavia coach Lori Trippi-Payne said. "We have one of the toughest schedules in the state. We've never taken a game from them ever, ever, ever. I thought our kids played with them. We got great blocks even in Games 1 and 3.
"We played some good defense. We know we can play good defense."
After the Bulldogs pulled out the tight second game to draw even, the decisive third game was tied at 5-5 before St. Francis sent its game into high gear. Malloy finished with 13 kills and 9 digs, and Haggerty powered down 8 kills despite sitting out Game 2.
"Definitely in the first and third game we were playing pretty clean and not making many errors," Spartans senior Mary Boken said. "Passing was really good and we just tried to keep it clean. In the second game we had a lot of service errors and made some other mistakes. They were very scrappy and good on defense, so we tried to push through with smart shots."
The Bulldogs' Maddy Astling and Clausen each had 4 block kills, but St. Francis was just too powerful to contain throughout the match.
Before the match St. Francis honored 2010 graduate Kelsey Robinson. She just returned from Italy where she helped Team USA make history on Sunday by beating China 3-1 to win the first world championship gold medal for the U.S. Women's program at the FIVB World Championship. After the match players from both schools took pictures with the outside hitter and her gold medal.