Balanced Cary-Grove stops Barrington

Cary-Grove played two balanced and highly efficient games against Barrington in Saturday's Class 4A girls volleyball regional final at Barrington.

The Trojans used great serving, passing and a strong block to defeat the Fillies by scores of 25-15 and 25-12.

"It's the best team I've seen in probably three years," Barrington coach Chris Bronke said of Cary-Grove. "(Cary-Grove coach) Patty (Langanis) had those kids ready to play. They had more focus and more execution than I've seen from a girls high school team in three or four years."

The Trojans (33-4), who won the seventh regional title in program history and their second in the last three years, will take on South Elgin (15-18) in the 6 p.m. semifinal Tuesday at the Huntley sectional.

Sophomore middle blocker Ashley Rosch and junior outside hitter Kelly Lamberti routinely blasted Abbey Heredia sets past the Fillie block for kills. And when they weren't doing that, senior Kayla Klinger was giving Barrington fits with her serve.

"I was just serving to seams where people would have harder angles to return," Klinger said. "And I was just mixing it up."

Langanis said her team is starting to put everything together in the playoffs.

"All of our hitters were contributing offensively," Langanis said. "We had a good block up tonight. Our serving was really backing us up, and our serve receive was some of the best we've had. At this point in the season to see it all come together is definitely exciting."

Langanis said the Trojans' successful serving allowed them to do a lot more things offensively.

"When you can get some runs like we were able to do it definitely frees us up at the net," Langanis said. "We can be a lot more creative offensively because we are getting points off our serve."

Cary-Grove won the regional, but has its sights focused on what's ahead.

"It's really exciting," Klinger said of the regional championship. "But I know there are other games ahead of us, and that's what we're going to focus on."