St. Charles East overcomes Rams

Regional volleyball finals tend to be tight contests where each vital point can be difficult to come by.

St. Charles East expected that from its championship match against regional host Glenbard East.

But as accustomed as the Saints have become to this sort of postseason battle, this time the familiarity extended beyond the action on the floor. Coaches Jennie Kull of St. Charles East and Glenbard East's Marci Maier go back a ways.

"Marci was the first setter I ever coached when I was down at Champaign (Central), and she's done an outstanding job with her team," Kull said. "We knew they'd be tough."

Saturday afternoon the teacher's team got the better of her former student's team as the Saints won a pair of see-saw games, 25-18, 25-20 to win the title and move on to the Lake Park sectional.

St. Charles East will play St. Charles North at 6 p.m. Thursday, with the winner playing either Wheaton Warrenville South or York.

The tone for the entire match was set in Game 1 as the Saints established a lead but couldn't shake the Rams.

"We traded points back and forth, but it was our intensity that won that game," St. Charles East's Mattie Boyd said.

The Saints gutted out the 7-point win with defense, passing and by limiting their mistakes.

"We've talked a lot of about finishing games," St. Charles East's Jacqui Seidel said. "Our goal today was to stay strong the whole time."

Despite dropping the opener, Maier was confident her team could overcome some of its struggles from Game 1, including adjusting to the Saints' aggressive and skillful serving.

"I knew if we could eliminate some of our errors, we'd be in the game," Maier said. "It's do or die here, so we weren't going to give up until the last point."

Despite the Rams' adjustments Game 2 bore a strong resemblance to its predecessor as the Saints jumped out to a 9-3 lead.

Seidel battled up front against Glenbard East's Amanda Peterson and Ashley Farrell, and though the Saints were never able to take control of the net, they kept finding ways to score.

"We saw that they had a good block, but we can adjust to that," Seidel said. "We mixed it up, hit around it, and they didn't know what to expect."

After Laura Homann's tip kill brought the Saints to within a single point of closing it out, the Rams (19-18) responded by scoring the next two before Boyd's perfectly placed shot ended it.

"We've been practicing that all season," Boyd said. "Instead of giving it air, I just hit it where the coaches taught us to."

The Saints (25-12) advanced to the final by beating South Elgin earlier in the day, 25-13, 25-7, thanks in part to Jordan Jones' 4 aces in Game 1.

"From now on everybody is playing to get to that next game," Kull said. "Right now we're very determined and focused."

-- Henry Perez

Addison Trail regional:ŒIt was not the way Jenny Pokorny and her Geneva volleyball teammates envisioned their season ending.

But what York lacked in convention was surely compensated in execution.

In a classic sectional-complex match pitting No. 4 versus No. 5 for the Class 4A Addison Trail girls volleyball regional championship, the Vikings ran out of steam.

With the season on the line and the Dukes holding a late 8-point lead in the decisive third game Saturday afternoon in Addison, the Vikings made one last-ditch stand.

Pokorny, the Vikings' four-year senior starting setter, had the last of her match-high 29 assists, feeding Lauren Wicinski with back-to-back assists as part of the Geneva 7-1 run.

Kelsey Augustine added an ace in the run for Geneva, and consecutive hitting errors by York sliced the Vikings' deficit to a more manageable 2.

But it was not to be for Geneva as fifth-seeded York, following its script of dropping its first game before rallying to win the final two, advanced to the Lake Park sectional with an exhausting 16-25, 25-22, 25-22 victory.

York (24-22), which rallied 21-25, 25-10, 25-15 over Willowbrook in its semifinal match, advances to meet top-seeded Wheaton Warrenville South, which defeated Batavia 25-15 and 25-7 at Bartlett. They will play at 5 p.m. Thursday at Lake Park.

The Vikings, who turned back Addison Trail 25-11, 25-15 to reach the championship match, concluded their year at 27-10.

"(The Dukes) came out really hard (in the third game), and it seemed like we weren't ready," said Pokorny, who added 7 digs and 4 blocks against York. "We fought hard. We did miss a couple of clutch serves."

The Vikings never trailed nor were they tied in capturing the first game, using a 5-1 game-opening run to seize control.

Rachel Urbelis and Augustine were the prime beneficiaries of the Pokorny-directed Geneva attack, and the latter ended the first game with one of her 9 kills.

Twenty-one more points elapsed in the second game before York had its first lead of the afternoon, and the inspired play of junior Brianne Graunke turned the tide for the Dukes.

The middle blocker restored confidence to York with a series of momentum-changing blocks for kills that enabled the Dukes to break the last of a dozen second-game ties.

Meghan Mullaney gave York a 24-22 lead with a vicious kill, and a rubber game became certain on a Geneva hitting error.

"(Graunke) is definitely the best player on our team," said York coach Patty Iverson. "She does an incredible job blocking."

York scored the first 4 points of the third game, and Geneva was never able to get back into the match, falling behind 23-15 before its last-ditch run.

"We knew (a potential match with York) was going to be a battle," said Geneva coach KC Johnsen. "We kind of dug our heels in."

Wicinski finished with a match-high 12 kills; Urbelis concluded her career with 11 kills and 11 digs.

Host Addison Trail ended its season at 14-22; the Blazers' Casey D'Ambrose, Robyn Hart and Marissa Liberio led the squad in its straight-games defeat against the fourth-seeded Vikings.

"Geneva has a strong offense, and we tried to prepare as best we could but couldn't pull through," said Addison Trail coach Jill Petrbok.

For No. 11 Willowbrook, Josie Hopkins led the offensive attack with 6 kills, and Stacie Bower was the defensive spearhead with 9 digs.

"We couldn't get it all together at the same time," said Willowbrook coach Sue Bower. "We lost our intensity (after the first game)."

-- Kevin McGavin

Class 3A Aurora Central Catholic regional:ŒTop-seeded St. Francis (34-3) romped to a 25-3, 25-6 victory over the 13th-seeded host in the semifinals, then defeated eighth-seeded Glenbard South 25-21, 25-7 in the final.

In the two wins for the Spartans, Megan Barnicle totaled 14 kills and 6 blocks, Kelsey Robinson also had 14 kills, Michelle Kocher collected 40 assists and Meghan Matusiak served 24 points, including 6 aces.