St. Francis advances to girls volleyball title game

NORMAL - St. Francis played like it's been here before.

Making their 15th appearance in the girls volleyball state tournament,the Spartans looked sharp from the start in sweeping Sycamore 25-17, 25-17 in the Class 3A semifinals Friday evening at Redbird Area.

"They were ready to be here," Sycamore coach Debbie Klock said. "They've been here before. They didn't have to go through those jitters. ... They were very confident and we were still getting into the feel of being in that match."

St. Francis (38-3) will try to claim its ninth state title when it takes on unbeaten Crystal Lake Central (41-0), an impressive 25-17, 25-11 semifinal winner over Belleville Althoff (31-10), in the championship match at about 5:45 p.m. today.

For the second straight match St. Francis received a confidence-boosting block from Megan Barnicle for the first point. The senior middle hitter followed with a kill, and Catherine Culligan spun an ace on the way to serving her team to a 5-0 lead.

"Both against Joliet Catholic and here again tonight, Megan Barnicle got a great first block," St. Francis coach Peg Kopec said. "That really set the tone that we were hoping for."

From there the powerful program continued to dominate as it built advantages of 15-5 and 19-8 before winning the opener on a missed serve.

In Game 2 St. Francis jumped ahead 7-3 and soon thereafter rode a 5-point run to a 14-7 advantage. Sycamore pulled within 5 on five occasions after that but never came closer.

"They were on the attack all the time," Klock said of the winners. "We were always playing defense."

St. Francis setter Michelle Kocher distributed the ball to her hitters with expertise. Senior Meghan Matusiak and sophomore Kelsey Robinson landed 7 kills apiece, Barnicle finished with 5 to go along with her 2 blocks, and freshman Meg Vonderhaar also had 5 kills.

"My job is to make sure that I give my hitters the best possibilities to succeed with a big kill," said Kocher, who tallied 23 assists. "I knew moving the ball around a lot would be the way to go."

Kopec liked her team's serving. Culligan reeled off 3 aces and Kocher added 1.

"I thought we served pretty well," Kopec said. "They didn't seem to be able to pass the ball as tight to the net as they probably wanted. We were able to dig them pretty well and we had several blocks."

Earlier in the day, St. Francis killed time with a visit to the Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington. Kopec was looking for suggestions for something to do today.

"The zoo was nice, but we don't want to do that two days in a row," she said. "That kind of layoff is difficult for the kids. They're ready to play. They get a good night's sleep and they're ready, so the waiting is a little bit difficult."

But it was nothing they couldn't handle Friday.