Naperville N., Wheaton Warrenville S. share title

Naperville North was thrilled to share in Volley for the Cure night at Wheaton Warrenville South Thursday.

Leaving with a share of a conference championship made the evening even better.

The Huskies beat WW South 25-18, 26-24, and in doing split the DuPage Valley Conference title with Naperville Central.

"It feels really good," Naperville North setter Jordan Pappas said. "We've been working hard to get this all season. We finally did it."

WW South joined many other schools from around Illinois in hosting a Volley for the Cure night. The two schools together raised close to $10,000 to go toward the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer research.

Shelley Thompson, a teacher and former coach at WW South and a breast cancer survivor, spoke before the match.

"You don't know how much your money and support means to survivors," Thompson said.

Both teams wore pink shirts in honor of the event. Pink was the color of choice in the crowd as well.

"The girls and the staff worked fabulously on this," WW South coach Bill Schreier said. "The first time out of the box you never know how it's going to run, but for the most part it ran pretty smoothely. It was great to see both communities respond in a united front."

"It was an awesome experience," Pappas said. "A lot of people contributed, it's a nice cause and they raised a lot of money. It was fun to be involved with this."

Naperville North (26-4, 13-1) came out strong in the first game, jumping out to a 13-5 lead. Six points came on Catie Cremin's serve, two of them aces.

"We really took them out of system the first game," Naperville North coach Jennifer Urban said. "We had some great serving."

Game 2 was much more nip-and-tuck. Naperville North's biggest lead was four, and there were eight ties. The last came at 24-24 on an Audrey Wilson kill for the Huskies after Naperville North had lost a 23-21 lead. After Wilson's clutch kill to stave off game point for WW South, Nrithya Sundararaman rose up for a block and Emily Cardwell put down her 8th kill for the match.

"They fought us really hard," Cardwell said. "It was really intense. I love intense games like that."

Sundaraman had 4 kills, Pappas 14 assists and Julie Chin 6 digs for Naperville North. Dayana Rodriguez had 7 kills, Monika Stanciauskas 8 kills and 2 blocks and Amy Drabant 18 assists and 3 aces for WW South (23-12, 9-5).