Boys volleyball: Lake Zurich warms to the task, defeats Grant

For the Lake Zurich boys volleyball team, strategizing warm-ups has become just as important as strategizing games.

The Bears believe they can win a match starting in the warm-ups. This is where the sports equivalent of psychological warfare comes into play.

Not often do opponents look over at the other team warming up and see a 6-foot-7 kid and a 6-foot-6 kid pounding down spikes and blocking everything in sight.

But they do when they're playing Lake Zurich, with 6-foot-7 middle Andrew Gilbertson and 6-foot-6 middle Nate Amos.

"In our warm-ups we really try to highlight Andrew and Nate and we're hoping that it intimidates the other team a lot," Lake Zurich coach Lesly Ravenscraft said with a chuckle. "That's our goal is to show that size."

The Bears certainly played big and won big on Friday night, sweeping visiting Grant, 25-14, 25-22 in a North Suburban Conference crossover. Lake Zurich is now 15-3 on the season. Grant drops to 8-15.

"The size helps so much with hitting and blocking, especially blocking," Amos said. "We don't have to jump as high as someone who is 6-foot tall. We're more fresh, rather than wasting a ton of effort jumping. And hitting-wise, both of us do a great job of hitting over the block.

"We're definitely a power duo in the middle."

Amos and Gilbertson combined for 7 kills and a block in a quick match. More than that, they altered many Grant hits, and often Grant's entire offensive approach, with their out-stretched arms and sheer presence on the net.

"When we're warming up, teams are always looking at us because we're big and we can hit hard," Gilbertson said. "So just even going into the game, it gives us a little bit of an edge mentally. And then in the game, you can tell sometimes that they're intimidated to hit over us because we're a big block."

Grant tried its best to prepare for Lake Zurich's unusual height. It was a focus this week in practice.

"It's very difficult to prepare for but we tried," Grant coach Daniel Bryan said. "We got out the blocking machine to try to help us identify the block. It's like this pole with padding on it and we put it up and say, 'Here's the block and try to hit around it.' If the ball hits the pole, it comes back on our side and teaches us coverage.

"We knew that they were big but I think their blocks got into our heads early on. You could see that in some hitting errors. We hit long or we stopped our swing because we were afraid to hit into their block."

Speaking of blocks, the Bulldogs had a few big ones themselves. Tim O'Toole and Alec Barrettsmith even combined to put up a monster block on Gilbertson.

"It was us as a team…when we play together and when we're vocal, we do good things," said O'Toole, who had 3 kills and 2 blocks. "It's not always about having big people or height. If you play together as a team and follow your fundamentals, you can win.

"But we just let them get in our heads and we weren't mentally focused enough. They came into the game knowing they were going to win and we weren't thinking that about ourselves."

Barrettsmith led Grant with 4 kills while Austin Freund added 3 kills and a block. Setter Jeff Helmich had 13 assists and Connor Cray paced the defense with 8 digs. Barrettsmith and Helmich added 7 digs apiece.

For Lake Zurich, Nick Meyer, a 6 foot-3 basketball player who also adds nice height, finished with 5 kills while Alex Krasowski added 4 kills. Setter Jeff Carmody rolled up 21 assists.