Girls volleyball: Wheaton Academy denies Fenton

Without a lot of height and a superstar, Wheaton Academy's girls volleyball team has to be scrappy on defense and use a balanced attack to pull out wins.

Both traits were on display Thursday night when the Warriors claimed their first Metro Suburban Conference win after outlasting Fenton 25-16, 21-25, 25-19. With 6-foot-1 sophomore middle hitter Brittney Wells out with an injury, the team was even shorter than usual, but that didn't stop the Warriors from improving to 5-10 overall and 1-3 in the conference.

"We really try and fight hard until the end, and we've always got to be on our defense for sure," said senior outside hitter Kayla Tyrrell, who had 6 kills and 7 digs against the Bison. "We're going to have to fight hard for sure in this conference."

In the first set the hosts served well and forced Fenton into a number of errors. The Warriors had a 10-2 lead in the opener following a block kill by Jessica McDonell, and the Bison never got closer than 4 while dropping the set.

But the 6-9 Bison, who like the Warriors were also desperate for a conference win, never trailed in the second set and evened up the match when Natalia Skop put down a kill to close out the set 25-21.

Wheaton Academy then stormed out to an 11-2 lead in the decisive third set and hung on from there.

"We were hoping for a win tonight because we wanted our first conference win," Tyrrell said. "It was a tough second set as we sort of lost our focus a little. But in the third set we really fought back hard because we wanted this win."

For Fenton, still searching for its first MSC win since the league expanded, it's been a heartbreaking week. The Bison had three match points on Tuesday before dropping a three-setter to Illiana, then hoped to claim an elusive win at Wheaton Academy only to come up just short.

"Wheaton Academy's historically a really good program and we came here tonight looking to finally get one in this gym and we feel like it's one we let slip away," Fenton assistant coach Dave Mello said. "They beat us, and I mean they earned the win, but we've had too many of these. We're coming in off a tough three-gamer where we had three match points and now we're 0-4 in conference. Since the conference expanded to the 14 teams, we haven't won a conference match. We're 0-28 now, but we're right there. We're nipping at the heels."

Maggie Rusiecka had 10 kills for the Bison and Skop added 6 kills and 13 digs. Both Paulina Milanowski and Mackenzie Miller set well, but Fenton came up just short again.

"The girls are working hard. This is the best team that Fenton volleyball has had since 1991, but eventually they need to see a positive result in conference. We're getting close and close and close and it's frustrating. We just need to get that monkey off our back," Mello said.

For Wheaton Academy, Alyssa Mantia had 5 kills and 4 digs, and libero Alicia Bun recorded 7 digs and 3 aces.