Girls volleyball: Harvest Christian cruises in 1A

Harvest Christian nearly won its sectional semifinal match by forfeit.

The Lions eventually got to take the court, but not for very long. Ellie Burzlaff had 8 kills and the Harvest servers racked up 16 aces in downing St. Francis de Sales, 25-6, 25-5, in the Class 1A Westminster Christian sectional Tuesday.

de Sales finally arrived at about 5:50 for the scheduled 5:30 start. The warm-up clock had started running and, had the Pioneers not arrived before the 6 minutes ran out, they would have been forced to forfeit. But they showed up with less than 2 minutes left on the clock after spending nearly 3 hours in Chicago traffic.

However, the Lions made sure their stay in Elgin didn't last long. Already leading 5-3, Harvest rolled off 13 straight points with libero Shayna Manusos at the service line. Four of the points were aces, and Burzlaff punctuated the run with a couple of searing kills.

"We wanted to come out strong and not play to the other team's level," said Burzlaff. "We were able to mix it up and get everybody involved."

"Everybody got to play tonight and we didn't miss a beat," said Harvest coach Kim Floyd.

Harvest (23-14) faces a rematch with Newark, which beat North Shore Country Day 25-11, 25-11 in Saturday's 7 p.m. final. The two met in the sectional semifinals last year and played a 3-set match early this season.'

Amanda Cassidy added 6 kills and 3 digs, and Mikayla Robinson had 5 kills for the Lions.

Game 2 was much the same. After a slow start, Harvest took a 5-4 lead on a blistering kill by Burzlaff. That put Candis Kaplan on the service line and she proceeded to rattle off 17 straight points. Eight of the points were aces, including 4 in a row at one point.

St. Francis finally forced a side out to make it 22-5, but the Lions rebounded to score the last 3 points.