Wauconda's operation is a winner
Somewhere a doctor is waiting to carve Ali Morrison's wounded hitting shoulder and repair her torn right labrum.
The doc might have to wait a little longer.
Morrison's surgery was originally scheduled for Tuesday of this week but was postponed because she and her Wauconda volleyball teammates keep winning matches.
“(Surgery) is scheduled for a week from (today),”said Morrison, a junior middle blocker. “But if we end up going to state, then it's getting pushed back even further.”
If Wauconda beats Marian Central in Saturday's Class 3A Hampshire supersectional, Morrison will have her wish.
Behind 11 kills apiece from Erinn Hellweg and Cara Nance, Wauconda outlasted host Grayslake Central 28-26, 22-25, 25-17 in an entertaining sectional final Thursday night.
“We left our hearts on the court,” said Lucy Peterson, who led the Rams with 11 kills.
Wauconda setter Megan Tallman (30 assists) and Morrison added 7 and 6 kills, respectively, as the Bulldogs improved to 21-17 and advanced to play Marian Central, which rallied past Crystal Lake Central 22-25, 25-15, 25-21 at Belvidere.
It was Wauconda's first sectional title in volleyball and the school's first since 1993, when the girls tennis and girls track and field programs accomplished the feat.
Grayslake Central, which played the postseason without its best player, 6-foot junior Klaudia Basierak, finished 26-13, the second-best record in school history. Without Basierak, who tore her ACL in the Crosstown Classic, the Rams seemingly didn't miss a beat.
“Everybody stepped up,” Peterson said. “We couldn't have just one person try harder. We had to have the whole team.”
The Rams had exactly that happen, with coach Jason Janczak never wanting to make Basierak's loss an issue.
“He's built such a program there,” Wauconda coach Bob Taterka said. “I've been coaching with him and against him for close to 10 years, and I want to give a lot of credit to (Grayslake Central) for what they were able to do without their best player.”
“They might walk through the sectional with (Basierak).”
“It speaks volumes of the cohesiveness the girls had, their energy and the never-say-die attitude that they brought to the court,” Janczak said of his girls. “You lose your best player and 99 percent of teams would be, ‘We're done.' But this team was special.”
Hellweg was aware of the fact that no Bulldogs team had won a sectional title since, well, the year she was born. And Wauconda didn't take the Rams lightly, despite the absence of Basierak.
“We didn't go in saying, ‘They don't have their best hitter so it's going to be easy,' ” Hellweg said. “We went in thinking it was still going to be a tough match. We gave it our 100 percent. We wanted this so bad.”
So did Grayslake Central, which forced Game 3 by overcoming a 22-19 deficit in the middle game.
Libero Stephanie Pimpo racked up a hefty 38 digs to lead an inspired defensive effort for Grayslake Central. The Rams oftentimes cheated up to take away Tallman's dump shots, Janczak said, which usually left the speedy Pimpo to defend the back row by herself.
“I can't say enough about our defense,” Janczak said. “When you're defending up against a setter that's probably the best in the county, you have to be on, and our defense was on.”
In the decisive third game, Wauconda burst to 4-0 and 8-1 leads behind Nance, and slowly pulled away. The winners also got big kills from Ava Wilhelm, Emily Holub and Morrison, who continues to play through her pain.
“I like to push through it,” Morrison said, “because I know I need to be here for my team.”