Glenbard East brings it against Tigers
Glenbard East brought more enthusiasm, an aggressive strategy and louder boys volleyball fans to Wheaton Warrenville South on Thursday.
Then the Rams took home a 25-21, 25-16 victory, taking the lead in the teams' season series and, more importantly, remaining alone atop the DuPage Valley Conference at 9-1 in their bid for their first league title. Naperville Central is 8-2 after defeating cross-town rival Naperville North on Thursday, with WW South falling to 7-3.
"It was awesome," Rams junior Tim Lovik said of the atmosphere in Wheaton. "Kind of like how it should always be. Kind of like football games, really big. It was really cool."
"It's fun to be around," Rams coach Marci Maier said. "It's energy. It reminds you of the postseason. You can't get this intensity -- no matter how hard you try -- you can't get this intensity in practice."
The Rams definitely had that intensity for this match, their second against the Tigers in five days.
"Our goal coming in today was to be firing on all cylinders and to bring a better product than we did at Downers South," Maier said about the tournament last weekend won by the WW South, "and see if that would be enough to win the ballgame."
It was.
The defending state champion Tigers (21-5) took their first lead in Game 1 at 10-9 and built the margin to 3. Then the Rams (23-3), ranked No. 2 in the Daily Herald Top 20 just behind the top-ranked Tigers, ran off 6 straight points with senior Nick Finder serving. They held off WW South the rest of the way, outside hitter Alec Palmer getting a block kill to end the game.
"At the beginning of the game, I felt it could have gone either way," Maier said. "We got a little bit ahead and we kept attacking. Offensively, we just kept going at it, going at it, going at it."
WW South came out strong initially in Game 2, with Rob Samp scoring the Tigers' first 3 points and staking them to a 3-1 lead. But the Rams quickly stole the momentum away, to the delight of their full-throated fans, and let the Tigers commit error after error to end the match.
"We need to be able to take better control of the ball on our side of the net, and that's where we were struggling tonight," Tigers coach Bill Schreier said. "… Against a team of this caliber you can't make those kind of unforced errors. I had us down at 14, and when the game's to 25, the other team only needs to score 11. You're really making life easy (for them)."