Witmer serves up Naperville North win

As Neuqua Valley might have expected, Shane Witmer got the job done for Naperville North.

But it wasn’t just the senior leaper’s dynamic hitting that did the Wildcats in on Thursday.

Witmer executed two fine runs at the service line in Game 2 to give the host Huskies a 25-22, 25-22 win in their first match of the season.

“Shane’s serving at the end was keeping them out of system,” said Naperville North coach Nate Bornancin. “He’s jump-serving this year, and that’s really improved our attack.”

After Naperville North won the closely contested first game, despite committing 7 service errors, the Wildcats broke fast in Game 2 taking a 16-11 lead, when a kill by Henry Cheatham gave the Huskies a sideout with Witmer at the service line.

The 3 points he scored, which included an ace, put the Huskies right back in the game, and they tied it at 17-17 a short time later on a kill by Witmer.

“The guys know that when you get a lead like that you have to put the other team away,” said Neuqua coach Erich Mendoza.

The game then went back and forth and was tied at every point from 17 to 22, when Cheatham’s kill gave the Huskies the lead and Witmer another chance to serve.

Witmer then finished off the game and the match, serving the final two points, and it was Adam Souhrada’s kill that finished off the Wildcats.

“Our passing wasn’t good early in the game,” Witmer said. “But we have the ballplayers to come through and we eventually did it. Our serving errors in Game 1 were just a case of us needing to settle down because this was the our first match.”

“Our guys never lost their composure,” Bornancin said. “When they were down by five they were calm and collected. We showed good consistency especially for a first match.”

Witmer led with 9 kills, Cheatham had 7 and Souhrada added 6. Danny Boryca had 9 digs, including a key save that led to a Neuqua error on the 24th point.

Jon Storm had a big night for the Wildcats with a game-high 14 kills. Zach Gilligan came up with 14 digs.

“We wanted to run our middles and spread our attack around a little more,” Mendoza said. “But we were a little late on our block and they were getting kills by tooling us. However, we played great defense. Not a lot of balls hit the floor. The guys felt good about the way they played and they know what they have to work on. We lost to a good team.”

Drew Antenen filling in for the injured setter Alex Blackwell dealt 17 assists.

Blackwell sprained an ankle last week in practice last week and could be out for a while.

Naperville North was missing junior outside hitter Spencer Sauter, who is expected to be out for two weeks with an injured elbow.