Glenbard North jumps for win vs. West Chicago

There's a risk-reward with jump serving every chance you get while swinging as hard as you can. But the Glenbard North Panthers feel like they'll be rewarded more than enough times to make it worth their while.

In Wednesday's nonconference boys volleyball match at West Chicago, the Panthers went with a toss it and rip it game plan when it came to serving and they were rewarded with a 25-20, 25-15 win over the host Wildcats.

Glenbard North recorded 9 aces on the night, led by 3 from Eric Tripp, and kept West Chicago off balance for much of the match with an arsenal of hard serves to all areas of the court.

"We're just always trying to rip it and get a good toss on it," said Glenbard North captain Brandon Gorzela. "We want to get all our errors out now so we can get through the rest of the season."

The risky serves led to a share of misfires, and 6 missed serves by the visitors helped the Wildcats stay close throughout the first set. West Chicago trailed just 15-12 following a kill by outside hitter Ross Behr and later clawed back to within 22-19 following a big block by Chris Arbudzinski and a missed serve by Glenbard North.

But Gorzela delivered a kill and D'erick Sawyer followed with a solo block and then a leaping kill on game point to give the opener to the Panthers (2-0).

"The first game we thought was too close so we came out more aggressive in the second game," said senior Tee White, who had 6 kills, 7 assists and also got in the act with an ace. "We knew we wanted to do what Panthers do - we wanted to come out aggressive and we wanted to win. Win how Panthers do."

With White and his teammates just as aggressive while also a little sharper, the visitors were in control of the second set throughout. The Panthers jumped ahead 6-1 before stretching the lead to 11-4 on another ace by Tripp. A block by White made it a 20-12 score and soon thereafter Bryan Nguyen took a set from Trent Weber and buried the attack to end the match.

"We just try and keep our serves intense," said White, one of several seniors back with varsity experience for the Panthers. "We try and rip it every time. We know that we're consistent servers and aggressive servers so we just wanted to go back there and hit our serves like we do in practice every day."

The hard serves were more than a young Wildcats squad could handle in its season opener. Behr had a team-leading 5 kills and Lucas Kulesza had 7 assists, but West Chicago couldn't keep pace with Glenbard North.

"I think they had the jitters. You know overall we have a pretty inexperienced team as far as playing varsity," West Chicago coach Kris Hasty said. "So I think for some of them it was kind of a shell shock to get in there and play this tempo ball that they're not used to playing.

"We've got to learn to pass those (tough serves) and we don't see those in practice because nobody does that. This was a shock. We can't mock this tempo in practice. We just can't. Hopefully, we'll be able to learn from this."