Wheaton Warrenville South Tigers build on volleyball dynasty

Illinois high school boys volleyball is a relatively young sport and it already has its New York Yankees.

Wheaton Warrenville South continued to build its dynasty when the Tigers won their third straight state volleyball title Saturday and their sixth already this century in beating Maine South 25-23, 25-14 in the finals of the 18th annual state tournament.

Five seniors on this team have been members of the past three championship teams for the Tigers (38-4), who took care of all three of their opponents this weekend in two games.

"When you have this many guys who have been through this before," said coach Bill Schreier, who has been the coach of all six title teams, "they understand what's at stake and how to get prepared to get there. We were ahead of schedule with some of the things we wanted to see done this season, and that speaks to our experience."

It wasn't that Maine South (35-7), a young squad that was something of a Cinderella team, went quietly into the night.

The Hawks battled the taller, more experienced Tigers all the way in Game 1 and even had the lead at 22-21.

The Tigers tied it on a Maine South error and took the lead when Kevin Mueller sent a kill deep in the Hawks zone.

Match point went to the Tigers on a powerful block-kill on the right side by one of the younger champions, sophomore Eric Luhrsen.

"In Game 1 we were right there," said Maine South coach Gary Granell. "We just let them back in. We've seen that happen before with Wheaton South when they had their back against the wall late in the game and they just manage to pull it out. We competed really well. We just made a couple of errors down the stretch. We let them off the hook."

Wheaton was in charge throughout Game 2.

"At around the third point of the second game, they started to crumble and we pushed and took advantage of that," said Wheaton Warrenville middle hitter Neal Whittington. "At that point everyone on this team knew we would pull it out."

"Instead of losing intensity, we just improved as the match went on," added outside hitter Neill Nystrom.

Nystrom, whom the Hawks thought was the difference in the game, had 6 kills and 3 blocks and Kevin Mueller was the kill leader with 8. Luhrsen, Whittington and Rob Samp had 3 blocks each.

"Throughout these playoffs all of our guys found their highest level of play," said setter Joe Kelly, who had 16 assists in the finals. "Everyone played the best ball they could this weekend, and we got what we expected the entire year."

Kelly, Mueller, Nystrom, Samp and Whittington have all played on three championship teams.

Schreier believes that winning the highly competitive Willowbrook sectional toughened the Tigers for the championship run.

"We had the toughest path to the title with the teams we had to play," Schreier said. "Especially in sectionals, where it took us three games to beat Hinsdale Central and Glenbard East, two teams who deserved to be here just as much as some of the other teams that were here."

Schreier saw the Downers Grove South tournament on May 1-2 as the launching pad for the push for the title.

The Tigers lost in the finals of that tournament in three games to Glenbard East, but the following week they won the Richards Tournament and haven't lost since. The three victories this weekend gave the champions an 18-match winning streak to close the season.

Eric Butch led the Hawks with 8 kills and 2 blocks, and his brother Matt added 4 kills and 3 blocks.