Metea Valley comes alive for victory

Monday's match on Monday was typical of a first volleyball contest of the season.Both Metea Valley and Hinsdale Central played tentatively and committed numerous service errors, hitting errors and violations.

But the visiting Mustangs got their legs under them as the evening wore on and defeated host Hinsdale Central 14-25, 25-22, 25-19.

"We may have had a little stage fright in Set 1," said Metea coach John Aister. "We didn't have the greatest warmup. Toward the middle of Game 2 we started to play the way I know we can play. We served aggressively, which took them out of system and we started playing fundamentally sound volleyball."

The Red Devils won the first game easily, building a 17-13 lead to 25-14 at the end, as the Mustangs committed one error after another.

"In that first set we passed well and scored our points off that," said Hinsdale Central coach Mike Konrad. "That's when Metea was having problems. Then in the second and third sets we flip-flopped and they started playing harder and passing better. We missed serves and couldn't get back on track."

The Red Devils committed 14 service errors in the match.

Game 2 was nip-and-tuck most of the way with the last of 10 ties occurring at 19-19.

But then a pair of kills by Metea's Joe Berka and one each by John Lynch and Tom Wieland helped close it out and sent the match into a third game.

In the third the Mustangs grabbed the lead at 10-9 on an ace by Noah Marzuki and held the lead the rest of the way.

Tom Wieland, who put down a match-high 12 kills exploded with 5 in the third game.

"I was a little nervous at the beginning," Wieland said. "In the first set our passing was bad. But that got better in the second and third. We started giving our setter the opportunities to pass to our middles, which opened up the blocks. And we started serving aggressively and took over the game."

"Our defense picked up in the third game," Aister said. "We were getting some blocks and we were digging the ball great, which gave us some transition kills."

Berka and Krishna Vannemreddy had 6 kills each for the Mustangs and Lynch had 3 blocks.

Jordan Hawk with 10 digs and Marzuki with 9 delivered the hustle points for Metea.

Jacob Zeeb led the Red Devils with 7 kills. Eamon McMahon came up with 8 digs and Joshua Vozenilek distributed 16 assists. Adam Conklin had 4 blocks and 3 kills.

"I liked the improvement I saw tonight from many of our players from last year to this." Konrad said. "And I liked our energy, especially in that first set. Many of our guys were in their first varsity match so we'll learn a lot from the defeat."

Hinsdale Central played without setter and co-captain Kian Peterson, who is out with an injury he suffered in club volleyball.