Girls volleyball: Kaburov, Hersey topple Fremd in 3
Hersey coach Nancy Lill called the Mid-Suburban League girls volleyball second-place crossover 'a fun match to be in' on Tuesday night.
"Until we broke it open in the third set, it was point-for-point," she said. "There was lot of good defense on both sides, a lot of exceptional play and lot of big swings."
No one had bigger swings than Boston College recruit Kati Kaburov, who put down a season-high 22 kills to help Hersey to a 26-24, 22-25, 25- 17 triumph in its own Ken Carter Gymnasium in Arlington Heights.
"I always like playing Fremd, it's always good competition," said the 5-foot-11 junior slugger who was 39-of-43 attacking along with 12-of-12 serving, 13 digs and 1 block. This showed us where we're at for the postseason."
The Huskies (23-7) acted as if they were at the MSL title match.
"This was huge for us," said Lill (972 career wins), who along with Fremd coach Curt Pinley (461 wins) are the two winningest active coaches in the MSL. "I got the girls in the mindset that this was our conference championship. We opened with a win over Barrington (MSL West co-champion with Fremd). Unfortunately we had one bad set and that cost us the tiebreaker with Buffalo Grove.
"We were excited to play Fremd. They've had an outstanding season and they're a classy team. Curt does a great job with the program. They have a great mixture of seniors and youth and they just keep coming at you."
Fremd came at Hersey late in Set 1 cutting a 21-14 deficit to 24-23 on a block by Jules Tangney.
But junior setter Kaiya Eshoo (41 assists) set Juliette van den Herick for a kill (25-24) before Karolina Wojdacz (7-of-7) fired an ace to end the set.
Fremd built an early 8-4 lead in Set 2. Hersey tied it at 17-17 on another kill by van den Herik.
Fremd (24-6) jumped back in front 21-17 on a kill from Peyton Hooker (6 kills, 1 block) en route to the 25-22 win.
In Set 3, an ace by Maddie Mullin (19 digs, 16-of-17 serving) led to a 17-11 lead for Hersey.
Fremd never got closer than 4. It was 23-17 when kills by Kate Lubbe (3 kills) and Eshoo ended the match.
"We had to be really loud and talkative in that third set," said van den Herik, who was 9-of-10 with 6 kills. "We worked as a team to get it done. Fremd is a strong team and we just battled to the end."
Other Hersey leaders were Janine Boyan (13-of-15, 9 kills) and Alessia Olhava (26-of-28, 7 kills).
The Vikes' attack was led by senior Heide Sayre (15 kills) and junior Breslin Reid (12) and set by freshman Rian Baker and junior Lydia Vander Ark (18 assists each).
"I thought we set well tonight in terms of moving the ball around," Pinley said. "We had a lot of single blocks which is what we need so when we were in system our offense was working well. We just got a little out of system in the third set and that was the difference.
"Give Hersey credit. Both teams played well tonight. Like I told my girls, what we wanted to take away from this ws being able to move forward to the state tournament. We didn't win but we didn't take a step backward either."