Boys volleyball: WW South takes down St. Charles North
Judging from the postgame comments by the respective head coaches, it was difficult to figure out which team won Wednesday night's boys volleyball match between Wheaton Warrenville South and St. Charles North.
For the record, the Tigers (2-0) outlasted the North Stars (0-1) in the nonconference match by scores of 34-32 and 30-28.
"Way too many unforced errors," said Tigers coach Bill Schreier. "We need to do a better job controlling things on our side of the net. I don't think we reacted very well to any of that stuff today and I think that's systemic of why it was a tight match."
The opening set turned into a marathon that included 23 ties and 10 lead changes as the teams combined for 15 service errors.
Trailing 18-15, the North Stars reeled off 4 straight points to grab a 19-18 lead, highlighted by a kill from junior Brendan Dal Degan (5 kills) and an ace by junior Max DeDobbelaere (8 digs).
DeDobbelaere's acrobatic dig and junior Kyle Donlevy's kill gave St. Charles North a 24-22 lead but the Tigers roared back to tie it at 24-24 on a kill from Jonathan Hogan (4 kills, 1 block) and a North Stars' rotation violation.
From there, the seesaw action included 5 WW South set points and 3 St. Charles North set points until the Tigers finally prevailed following a North Stars' passing error and crosscourt kill from freshman Zeo Meyer.
Needing a point to win the set, the Tigers were often their own worst enemy with 3 service errors.
"So many balls out of bounds, so many serves out of bounds," said Schreier. "Those are just inexcusable, especially the serves."
In the second set, WW South opened its largest lead of the night at 19-15 on a combined block from Hogan and Meyer.
However, the North Stars fought back and tied the score at 22-22 on a dig from Danny Throop (18 assists) and kill by Dal Degan.
St. Charles North fought off a pair of match points at 24-23 and 25-24 before a tip kill by Donlevy (5 kills, 2 aces) and Tigers' hitting error put the North Stars up 26-25 and on the verge of forcing a decisive third set.
Luke Robbins' well-placed crosscourt kill gave the Tigers a 28-27 lead, and the visitors finally pulled it out following St. Charles North's 15th service error of the night and subsequent hitting error.
"It was just the serving that broke our backs," said North Stars coach Todd Weimer. "Fifteen missed serves can't help you win a lot of games."
Junior David Beach led North with 8 kills.
"For the first match, I was very happy with our defense and our back row," said Weimer. "Defensively, we had 23 digs as a team. I'll take that any night against a quality team. We respect them a lot."
Daniel Higley paced the Tigers with 7 kills, while Alex Carr had 12 assists and 8 digs.
"Closing out is one of the bigger things we need to focus on," said Robbins. "We can't have games going to 30-plus points because it's not going to be good for our legs moving forward."