Boys volleyball: York falls to Stagg

John Sopko has been playing with the York boys volleyball team for long enough to know the potential the Dukes have.

Unfortunately, that also means he knows when they aren't up to par.

"Honestly, we've been playing together since fifth-grade camps at York, and I think that we can click and when we click, we're a very good team," the senior said. "Overall, I think we're a very good team. Honestly, we just make the same mistakes."

Monday night in Palos Hills, the Dukes showed their upside, but they also showed more of their faults, falling in three sets to Stagg 25-23, 16-25, 25-23.

"I mean we had a lot of unforced errors today," said senior setter Ryan Schaner, referencing York's 21 errors. "We made some crucial errors, we just need to play a more solid, overall game."

The second set showed just how strong York (9-4) can be.

The Dukes scored 5 of the first 6 points of the set. York extended its attack, using its outsides and middle to break the Stagg (7-7) defense.

"Second set we started getting our one middle, Pat Resing going," Schaner said. "He helped us out because that spread out the offense a lot. We won the air battle in the second game."

The Dukes led by 10, 21-11 after Schaner found Matt Howlett for a kill. Stagg chipped away, getting the deficit back to 7 points, but York closed the set on an attack error from Stagg.

York seemed to be in control after that second set.

They showed it in their play, too. After Stagg took a 4-3 lead in the third set, the Dukes went on a 9-2 run in which Schaner had two kills, Sopko had an ace, Michael Dirmish had a kill and Stagg committed 5 errors.

"I thought we had a lot of momentum," Schaner said.

Stagg took a timeout and stole it all back. The Chargers scored the next 4 points out of the timeout to make it 12-10 and chipped away to tie the set at 16.

"I told them to settle down," Stagg coach Tim Kaczmarek said. "We get down a couple of points and we think it's over."

Still, York seemed to be in the driver's seat. The teams exchanged the leads four times after that, but the Dukes took the lead on a Schaner kill and then made it 23-21 on a Charger violation.

But Stagg rallied. The Chargers scored four straight points - two of them on Duke errors - to win the match.

"We had two good passes after getting up two points and we just had two attack errors," York coach Ken Dowdy said. "What are you going to do? You keep attacking."

York feels it can fix its hitting errors.

"We just need to be a lot smarter on our shots," Sopko said. "When we're getting kills, and we realize it, we're putting balls in the corners. I think that's working.

"A lot of times, we like to swing away, just because it's a satisfying kill, especially when you swing it hard. I think if we just stop hitting into a block, it'll be a lot better for us as a team and it'll boost are hitting percentage and our confidence."