Girls volleyball: Larkin to face Loyola for regional title

Up by 11 points in Game 2, Larkin's girls volleyball team was poised to take the victory away from higher seeded Northside College Prep. Eleven points after that the Royals finally got to celebrate that victory, reaching the regional finals with a 25-16, 25-21 win in one semifinal of the Class 4A Larkin regional Tuesday night.

Larkin (11-24), seeded 10th in the Maine East sectional, will take on top-seeded Loyola at 6 p.m. Thursday for the regional title. Loyola defeated Rolling Meadows 25-15, 25-16 in Tuesday's first semifinal.

After trailing early in Game 1, the Royals, playing in front of a loud home crowd, finally got some momentum going thanks in large part to a solid service game.

Trailing 11-8, Larkin got the serve back on a Mustangs hitting error April McGhee stepped to the line. McGhee would not disappoint, delivering 2 aces, and had plenty of help up front from Danielle Newquist and sophomore captain Natalie Kofie.

When the eighth-seeded Mustangs did finally call a timeout to slow McGhee they saw their 3-point lead turn into a 6-point deficit. The Royals would finish Game 1 with 5 straight points and start Game 2 with 6 more, with McGhee colleting 3 more aces to give her 5 for the match.

"We work a lot of location (with our serves), and being a shorter team you kind of have to have serving and defense as your strengths," Royals' coach Henry Graack said. "April was doing a real good job with hitting the locations we were going after."

In Game 2 it was more of the same - strong serving to give Kofie (12 assists), Newquist (6 kills) and Ella Roland (6 kills) a chance to score points. It was that way until the last few points when Northside got hot, scoring 9 points before the Royals put them away.

Graack did not call a timeout to try and ice Northside saying, "I wanted them to work through it. It's a good lesson for them to learn for Thursday. I was going to call a timeout if they scored one more though."