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Girls volleyball: Fremd gets key triumph in West

With the possibility of falling two matches behind in the Mid-Suburban West girls volleyball race, defending champion Fremd was pretty much in a must-win situation on Thursday night in Palatine.

The Vikings' fans must have known that, too, because a good crowd including a nice student body section, showed up to support coach Curt Pinley's squad.

They were rewarded with an impressive 25-16, 25-19 triumph over visiting Schaumburg team which came into the match at 5-0.

That perfect record included a two-set win over Fremd in the West season opener three weeks ago.

"This time we were at home with all our fans," said senior defensive specialist Samantha Smith. "They were incredible."

"Today we just clicked," said senior setter Sarah Straup who handed out 21 assists. "It might have been the excitement of the gym. A lot of people came out and was exciting."

The Vikings (13-6, 5-1) were excited to climb back into a tie for first place with the Saxons (12-7, 5-1) and four matches to go.

After Jules Tangney and Peyton Hooker twice went up for the double block and got hands on the ball, the contest's final rally ended when Straup set Jess Rizzo for a match-high ninth kill.

"We've been working hard at blocking," Pinley said. "I didn't think we did a good job at that the first time we played them. We talked about not needing block kills but getting touches to slow the ball down and we did a pretty good job at that tonight."

Junior Heidi Sayre did a good job at the net with her 5 kills, followed by Hooker (4) and Jess Mazur (3).

Rizzo was also perfect at serve receiving (10-of-10) while junior Maddie Aichinger was 8-of-9 and Sayre 5-of-5.

"Everyone was hitting great, the passing was great and serving good," Straup said. "We're really excited about this. We really wanted this match."

Senior Morgan Sterrett put down 7 kills to lead Schaumburg which fell behind 5-1 in Set 1 and 5-2 in Set 2.

"Fremd is a good team so when you are chasing you have to do some things your don't normally do," said Saxons coach Tim Murphy. "Fremd played really well, passed fantastically and served aggressively.

"I think they had a good scouting report on us and knew what they wanted to do against us. They came out and executed."

Straup's nifty second-attack kill and a block by Tangney gave the Vikings a 13-5 lead in Set 1 and Schaumburg never got closer than 5 points.

"I tell the girls all the time, whether we win or lose, we have to take something away from it," Murphy said. "What we are going to take away from this is that we need to practice harder, we need to be better and we need to move forward to the goals we want achieve."

Sayre led Fremd with a pair of aces while Mazur and Straup each had one. Aichinger led the back row with 7 digs, followed by Smith (4) and Rizzo (2).

"Honestly we played as a team," Smith said. "We fought through it and we wanted to win so badly."

"I thought we played a real solid match all the way around," Pinley said. "Our defense started it and we set well. Sarah Straup made some great decisions on the court and we attacked well. We didn't make a lot of hitting errors."

"We made them have to play every ball. If you can do that against any team you are going to be in the match. Schaumburg is such a good team, We had a lot of pressure on us because they were undefeated."

With four West matches left, the Vikes know there is a lot of volleyball left to reach a second straight MSL title match.

"When we lost to Schaumburg in the first match of the year we said to win conference we were going to have to win out," Pinley said. " And that's something we've had to work on this whole stretch. After the match we told the girls we're far from done. This wasn't the conference championship. We still have four more tough conference matches left before anything. But this was a step we needed to take."

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