Boys volleyball: St. Charles North downs South Elgin

Eight St. Charles North boys volleyball players registered at least one kill in Tuesday's Upstate Eight home match against South Elgin.

Ten North Stars attempted at least one hit.

And 14 played in a 25-16, 25-13 victory.

"It's great to have depth on the roster right now," St. Charles North senior Kyle Donlevy said.

"No matter who we played, it's just about chemistry," North junior setter Kyle Gruber said. "We were just trying to get everything working, and everything on our side was working, defense to offense. I felt like if we could get the points, we could just keep serving and serving."

Gruber rotated in for Donlevy early in the second set, right after Donlevy crushed a David Beach assist to give St. Charles North (10-6, 2-0) a 5-3 lead.

Gruber's ensuing trip to the service line netted the North Stars 3 more points to extend the run to 4-0. First, Beach hammered a Gruber set to make it 6-3.

On the next point, Gruber made a nice dig before he set a thunderous spike by 6-8 senior hitter Tommy Koppang, who next year will play for Pepperdine. Koppang converted 6 of 10 hitting attempts and served 4 of North's 6 aces. Brian Dal Degan closed the run with a back-row smash to make it 8-3, and young South Elgin (5-6, 1-2) was unable to gain any traction.

"We have five sophomores, three of which see pretty significant playing time," South Elgin coach Adam Plach said. "It's a bit of a learning curve, but we need a few less blank stares. We have to compete, we have to fire up and we just don't see that right now. That's really what hurts us, especially at this point in the season when some of the errors we're making are not the kind of errors you should be seeing at this point of the season by a varsity team."

Donlevy posted 4 kills, Dal Degan and Ben Woytch each had 3 and Beach, Cole Recchia and Zach Yates finished with 2 kills apiece for the North Stars, who were led in assists by Gruber's team-best 8.

Mandeep Sangha, Raul Correa and Vince Miszkiewicz finished with 2 kills apiece and Christian Ayar and Daniel Skrzypchak each had 3 digs for South Elgin.