Wheaton Warrenville's Hardek saves the day

When they needed him most, Wheaton Warrenville South turned to senior Eric Hardek, and as he usually does, Hardek produced.

After they split the first two games in the finals of their own Tiger Classic against Glenbrook North 25-19 and 23-25, the Tigers were down 15-8 in Game 3.

That's when Hardek led the rally to help beat the Spartans 26-24 for the tournament championship, the Tigers' first since 2004.

The win was especially sweet because the Tigers lost to the Spartans last week in two games at the Buffalo Grove Invitational.

Earlier in the day, the Tigers (10-2) defeated New Trier and Buffalo Grove in gold flight play.

Hardek took over the serve when the Tigers were trailing 17-12, and when he was finished, they were ahead 20-17.

Eight straight points, and two of them were Hardek aces.

"Hardek served us back into it," said Wheaton Warrenville South coach Bill Schreier. "And once he gets us to 17-17 it's anybody's game."

"Eric went on a huge run and his serves were amazing," said Tigers libero Brian Williams, the team's only other senior.

For his efforts throughout the three-day tournament, Hardek was named the Tiger Classic Most Valuable Player.

When his team trailed by 7 points, Schreier tried to remind the players to just stay loose.

"A lot of the points Glenbrook North made in that stretch were due to our errors," Schreier said. "I told them to go make them earn their points. Be aggressive, go down swinging and really make the plays. I thought they did a good job of that."

The comeback it took an entire team effort by the Tigers starting with Williams' steady defense, proceeding to pinpoint sets by Joe Kelly that culminated in a combination of powerful and strategically-placed kills by Kevin Mueller, Neill Nystrom and Eric Hardek, who, fittingly, put down kills for the last 2 points of the match.

Schreier had high praise for his entire team, emphasizing the progress it has made since suffering two losses at Buffalo Grove last week

"They're starting to believe in themselves," Schreier said. "Look what Brian Williams did today as far as ball control. Our first-ball contact was incredible. Kevin Mueller made great strides. Rob Samp in the middle had some huge swings and Eric Luhrsen, a freshman, did a great job of challenging the block. Nystrom was hobbled but got better as the day wore on."

Schreier said the most important thing about the tournament for his team is the level of competition. Many of the teams who competed this week are potential candidates for the eight-team state tournament.

"We want to be able to come out and compete and that's what we did a good job of," Schreier said. "We won a three-game match in the semis and came back and won a three-game match in the finals."

"Today, we played three matches in succession and it's like state," Williams said. "You get exhausted, but this prepared us to keep our focus. Forget the mistakes and concentrate on the now."

Mueller led with 15 kills, followed by Hardek with 12 and Nystrom with 11. Kelly had a career high 40 assists while Williams had a career-high 13 digs.

Glenbrook North (7-2) was led by Billy Vydra with 9 kills and 8 digs, and Sajid Bhimani with 8 kills. Tim Bedford set for 28 assists.

"Wheaton played much better than last week," said Glenbrook North coach Chris Cooper. "They passed a lot better and they ran the middle more, which kept us off-balance. Nystrom was tough to stop and (Mueller) tooled us on the outside a ton."

Among those who joined Hardek on the all-tournament team were Kelly, Matt Brahm of York, Jon Bunge of Naperville North and Matt Yanz of Naperville Central.

Sandburg topped Buffalo Grove in the third-place game, while Naperville Central won a three-game match with Naperville North for fifth place.