Johnsburg tops Grayslake Central for sectional championship

The cameras were flashing like crazy Thursday night at North Chicago.

When the last obligatory group photo was finally snapped and all of her teammates began to scatter to find family and friends, Danielle Slivka realized that she was a bit weighed down.

She was holding the newest piece of hardware for the Johnsburg trophy case: a sectional championship plaque.

"I don't want this," the Johnsburg guard playfully chirped as she tried to push it onto a teammate."

"I don't want it either," the teammate jabbed back.

Neither of you want to hold the sectional trophy?

"Well, it's really heavy," Slivka laughed.

And, let's be honest here, Slivka's muscles had already been through quite a workout. The junior put the Skyhawks on her back in the Class 3A North Chicago sectional title game against Grayslake Central. She scored a game-high 23 points as Johnsburg rolled up a 59-41 victory.

The Skyhawks, who were cheered on by a humongous student section that started on the first row and continued all the way up to the last, improve to 27-7 and advance to the supersectional for the second straight season.

"I'm really excited," Slivka said.

"We worked really hard to get here and it's exciting that it's paying off."

A fast start paid off, too.

The Skyhawks ran out to a 9-0 lead before Grayslake Central got its first bucket at the 3:27 mark. The push continued as Johnsburg closed out the quarter with a 15-2 lead.

That set the tone for the entire game, for both sides.

"This was our third time playing them and you always talk about how it's hard to beat the same team three times in a season," Johnsburg coach Mike Toussaint said. "We knew they were coming in here motivated to get us. But our No. 1 key was that we had to get a quick start. Any confidence they had, we wanted to take it out right away. And I think it did take something out of them."

Flustered and frustrated, Grayslake Central hit just 6-of-22 shots and turned the ball over 11 times in the first half alone.

Johnsburg took a 28-16 lead into the locker room that felt even more sizeable that it actually was.

"It's always hard to come back when you get down by that much," said guard Alison Metzger, the only player to finish in double-figures for Grayslake Central. She had 16 points, including four 3-pointers.

"We lost momentum in the beginning and that hurt us the rest of the game."

It was deja vu at the start of the second half and Johnsburg added to its lead by rushing out on a 12-0 run to begin the third quarter. That made the score 40-16 with about 5:33 left.

Grayslake Central hit a few three-pointers in the fourth quarter to get its crowd back into the game, but the deficit never got lower than 14 points.

"It was 9-0 before we knew it and it takes a lot of energy to come back from that," said Grayslake Central coach Roger Lass, whose teams closes out the season with an 18-12 record.

"But this is only the second time this program has ever been in the Sweet 16 and nobody thought we'd do anything. So this was still a pretty good season for us."