Girls volleyball: South Elgin tops Glenbard North

At the start of the preseason South Elgin girls volleyball coach Joni Plach moved senior Taylor Hankins from middle to outside hitter. It's a decision that has been paying dividends - especially on Thursday night.

Hankins knocked down a team-high 13 kills for the Storm in an exciting 21-25, 25-17, 27-25 nonconference win over visiting Glenbard North.

"The decision was pretty easy," Plach said. "As soon as I saw how much she had improved I knew we had to get her the ball more. She played middle for us last year, but the outside is where you want your go-to players and she has definitely become one of our go-to players."

Hankins played a huge role in the decisive third game against the Panthers with 5 kills. She hammered down 2 spikes late in the game that put South Elgin up 21-20 and 22-21.

Moments later South Elgin (3-2-4) was up 24-23 and serving for match point, but North scored the next 2 points on kills by Juliette Glogovac and Maddie Vegrzyn to take a 25-24 lead and had its own chance to win. However, the Panthers committed 3 straight unforced errors as the Storm closed out the win on back-to-back service points by McKayla Geraghty.

"We knew we just needed to pull it together," Hankins said. "We just kept giving it our full effort. I like those situations. I'm looking for the ball. I know when I go up I just want to hit it as hard as I can. It was a pretty big win for us. Hopefully a win like this can push us forward."

Hankins had some help. Libby Vedrine added 7 kills. Casie Swanson set up the offense with 23 assists and while it didn't show up in the stat sheet Jessica Wimbley also played an important role according to Plach.

"Jessica did a great job of rolling to the middle and drawing a blocker," Plach said. "That took the double team off Taylor and gave her one-on-one opportunities. Those are small things that don't always get noticed, but make a huge difference. Also it's the first game I left Swanson in to set all around and she did a great job of pushing the sets to the outside and knowing when to change it up and go to the middle."

The Storm struggled with their serve receive in the opening game as North recorded 5 aces. The Panthers broke a 15-15 tie with 3 straight points, including kills by Maddie Meyers and Vegrzyn. The Panthers led the rest of the way to take the first game.

The Storm turned the tables in the second game opening with a pair of aces from Hayley Fisher. South Elgin extended the lead to 6-0 behind the serving of Fisher and never trailed the rest of the way.

North (3-7) was plagued by 23 unforced errors over the last two games. Vegrzyn had a team high 11 kills for the Panthers.

"We continue to improve a lot." North coach Anne Bremmer said. "But you can still see the wheels spinning in our heads sometimes. The improvement is great, but we'd sure like to pull some of these out."