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Girls volleyball: WW South shows progress against Bartlett

Before the season Wheaton Warrenville South girls volleyball coach Bill Schreier said his team would be a work in progress.

Progress is being made.

Junior outside hitter Mackenzie Stebbins had 8 kills, freshman Zayna Meyer had 7 kills and 10 assists and sophomore setter Sarah Burau added 15 assists and 3 kills to lead WW South past Bartlett 25-21, 25-21 Thursday in Wheaton.

"I have been pretty pleased with their progress," Schreier said. "We still have our moments where we're going make young errors. But more often than not we're making the positive plays."

Schreier was particularly pleased with the way his back row handled Bartlett's powerful serving, which allowed five players to contribute at least 3 kills each.

"That's the one thing that kept us going tonight," he said. "When we pass, we can utilize some of these young athletic options that we have. Our offense was pretty diverse."

Schreier isn't the only one who has noticed the Tigers' growth during the early part of the season. Stebbins, a part-time player last year, echoed her coach's assessment.

"We're definitely getting better and rising as a team," she said. "We're young, but we have a lot of talent. We critique ourselves on whatever we need to do from last game and work from there. I thought I played pretty well tonight, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement."

The games were mirror images. WW South (5-4) and Bartlett played point-for-point through the first 20 points of each set before the Tigers pulled away to an 18-13 lead.

Bartlett fought back both times, closing to within 22-21 in the first game and 23-20 in the second. But Stebbins closed out the first game with an ace and Meyer ended the second with a booming volley off a Bartlett defender.

"The biggest thing for us is our serving," said first-year Bartlett coach Katie Spychala. "Missed serves can make or break a game. If we have those serves that we missed, we would have been tied and it would have been a battle to the end."

Like WW South, Bartlett (3-3) is also very young. The Hawks started two juniors and two sophomores, including sophomore setter Dakota Johnson.

"We have a very young team," Spychala said. "We've had to mesh together in a very short amount of time. Everything is new. In the past they would bring up freshmen to the varsity. We had freshmen all over the place.

"This is the first year we're trying to keep all the teams together so that our program can build together throughout the years," the coach added. "The next few years we will have a really strong program with all our teams."

Meghan Colley led Bartlett with 5 kills and Alexia Hetzel added 4. Libero Samantha Martino contributed 7 digs.

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