Prospect rises to the occasion against Fremd
At 5-foot-9, Prospect’s Dan Hoffman is a bit on the small side for a volleyball outside hitter.
But with an estimated 35-inch vertical leap, the senior still manages to play way above the net.
Wednesday night in a Mid-Suburban League crossover, Hoffman slammed 14 kills on 20-of-25 hitting as the Knights defeated host Fremd 27-25, 23-25, 25-22 in an entertaining early season match.
“It got a little sloppy in the beginning, but we were able to pick it up,” said Hoffman, who also contributed 14 digs to the victory and was 11-of-12 on serve receive. “We definitely played a lot better than we did last weekend.”
The Knights (1-4) had lost all four games Saturday in their season opening competition at Buffalo Grove’s Bison Battle, but came on strong Wednesday as junior JD Fischer hit 7 kills and served up 2 critical aces in the third game.
“We didn’t have any close games in the (BG) tournament, so this win was good to see,” said Fischer. “We put a lot of the errors we were making behind us and picked up the intensity.”
“We stopped letting everybody walk all over us,” said Prospect coach Mike Riedy.
Fremd junior Jim Kowalczyk was 35-for-40 from the setter position with 15 assists to help lead a comeback that almost resulted in a win for the Vikings (0-1), who were playing their first match of the season.
Senior libero Kolbe Stenoien, who helped his team advance to the Elite Eight last season, is the only returning full-time starter as Fremd was hit hard by graduation. The Vikings lost a tough match to eventual state champion Marist in last year’s state quarterfinals and Stenoien says what he learned by playing at the highest level will help this spring.
“I want to take the experience I got (at last year’s state meet), “ said Stenoien, “and carry it over into this season. I feel like I have a lot of knowledge that I can pass on to the younger guys.
“I think that we played a lot better than expected tonight, for our first game. We showed the kind of potential we have, and with most of our team having very little experience at the varsity level, we have nowhere to go but up.”
Stenoien had 13 digs for Fremd while junior outside hitter Alex Costigan led the team in hitting with 5 kills.
Junior liberto Richard Lenke was 20-of-22 on serve receive for the Knights and pitched in from the service line with 2 aces.
Andrew Busse added 2 block kills for the winners as Riedy was extremely happy with his team’s overall play.
“We’re going to work out the kinks — as soon as we learn what the kinks are,” said Riedy. “We’re not going start the season with guns-a-blazing. We’ve got a game tomorrow, then we’ve got a chance to be more aggressive as we go into conference games next week.
“It’ll take a while to get into our groove.”