Vernon Hills cruises into semifinals
Was this too easy?
Vernon Hills middle blocker Garrett Kubacki answered the question in one word:
“Yes,” Kubacki said.
Too Easy? Against a 25-1 team from Southern Illinois — an Edwardsville squad with a bone fide slugger in Eric Fitterer?
Apparently so. Vernon Hills (36-4) made school history with its 36th win of the season and earned a berth in the IHSA state volleyball semifinals.
The Cougars opened up a double-digit lead in Game 1 of their first state tournament appearance en route to sending Edwardsville home for the summer with an impressive 25-11, 25-18 rout at Hoffman Estates High School on Friday.
The Cougars play Naperville North in a semifinal match today at 10 a.m. Naperville North edged Oak Park-River Forest 25-17, 23-25, 25-19.
With their first state opponent located nearly 300 miles away, Cougars coach Chris Curry had to search for a scouting report on this once-beaten team.
“I had a couple of college buddies down there,” Curry said. “I got a pretty good scouting report.”
Maybe the long bus ride hurt the Tigers — but hitting percentages immediately tell what happened in this match. The Cougars had only 3 hitting errors and hit for a .529 average. The Tigers reached double figures in errors (10) and hit just .162.
An example of those errors came with Cougars setter Justin Opitz serving the ball. His team led 7-4 in Game 1, and the senior scored 4 quick points to jump the advantage to 11-5 — aided by mistakes on the other side of the net.
“We served relatively well,” Curry said. “It was a nice, solid match. We kept the ball in-bounds.”
In Game 1, Edwardsville felt the wrath of the Vernon Hills hitters. On four consecutive Edwardsville serves, Kubacki, Opitz, Thomas Robinson and Martin Niemczewski all registered kills that returned the serve back to the Cougars.
“We wanted to play up and above our potential,” Opitz said.
After the Game 1 rout, the Tigers (25-2) mustered a little fight in the second game. Edwardsville held an early 4-3 lead before Opitz again went to the serving line. This time his offense put up some points, first on a Niemczewski block, then another Robinson kill and finally a Joseph Ho block kill that gave the Cougars a 9-7 lead.
“Joe is learning the game for three months at a time,” Curry said about Ho. “And he’s been leading us in blocking the second half of the season.”
The turning point in the second game came with Kubacki serving. Ho and Opitz registered kills as the Cougars opened up a 21-14 lead.
Robinson paced the Cougars with 7 kills and Niemczewski added 6 kills. Also helping out were Mikey Kelly (3 kills), Kubacki (2 kills) and Opitz (2 kills). The senior setter added 14 assists. David Swanson’s 5 digs paced the defense.
“We haven’t seen Naperville North,” Curry said. “So we will break down the tape of their game.”