Waubonsie Valley defeats St. Charles East
Waubonsie Valley loves ending every volleyball practice with a drill dubbed “Dig or Die.”
“You have to get to 7 points,” Warriors coach Kristen Stuart said, “and if the ball falls you go back to 0. They love that drill. They always ask for it.”
Thursday's match with St. Charles East wasn't do-or-die, but both teams played like it.
Waubonsie rallied from down a game and weathered three match points in the third for a dramatic 19-25, 25-16, 29-27 win on Senior Night in Aurora.
The two teams shared the Upstate Eight Conference championship last year. Split into two separate divisions, Waubonsie won the UEC Valley this week. This match felt like a championship was on the line.
“Even though it's not for conference, it's still great to get a win against them,” Waubonsie senior Martha Stewart said. “They're a good team, a well-known team, they won state two years ago.”
James Madison recruit Stewart was dynamite in her final home match. She put down 23 kills 11 in the decisive third game and had many more spikes dug up by a scrappy St. Charles East defense.
“Martha Stewart was unreal. She was pretty much automatic,” Stuart said. “She seemed like she was just not going to let us lose.”
The widest margin in Game 3 was 3 points. Waubonsie never led by more than 2. A Sam Szarmach kill gave the Saints match point at 24-23, but Stewart put down back-to-back kills off blocks to give Waubonsie (25-10) the serve for match. Szarmach's kill denied the Warriors, and Stewart's wide spike gave the Saints another shot at the match.
But St. Charles East (25-10) served into the net, and after Szarmach's 14th kill the Saints served long to miss out on a third match point.
“We made some mental errors at the end that kind of shot us in the foot,” Saints coach Jennie Kull said. “We have to finish. Two service errors we can't have that.”
A Saints hitting error gave Waubonsie back serve for match point. Lisa Studnicka appeared to put down a kill to win it, but St. Charles East miraculously dug it out and over. Given a second shot, Studnicka drove the winner off the Saints block.
“St. Charles East was very scrappy,” Stuart said. “I told the girls ahead of time ‘they're going to keep digging you. You have to keep swinging until you put the ball away.' I thought we got a lot smarter with our shot selection after the first game.”
Studnicka had 9 kills, Meagan Mooney 33 assists and Jill Galovic 18 digs for Waubonsie, 10-2 in its last 12 matches going into the playoffs. The Warriors won at Neuqua on Tuesday to win the UEC Valley and will now shoot for their first regional title since 2006.
“We've played really well this last week,” Stewart said. “We're excited and ready to go for the playoffs.”
Meghan Niski had 12 kills and 8 digs and Maisey Mulvey 27 digs for St. Charles East. Like its marathon loss to Benet at the Mizuno Cup, where the third game went 37-35, the Saints could take away plenty from Thursday.
“Both teams just played great. It was a well-played match,” Kull said. “Matches like this, you want to win these but you walk away with the sense that the girls are playing well right now.”