Montini moves on after topping Wheaton Academy

Steve Dowjotas dares to dream of the ultimate Montini girls volleyball moment.

“It would be nice to beat St. Francis,” said the first-year Broncos coach and Montini alum. “That’s a long-time goal for us.”

Ready or not, Dowjotas’ young Broncos will get that chance tonight. That is after Montini beat Wheaton Academy 24-26, 25-16, 25-16 in Monday’s first round of the Class 3A St. Francis regional in Wheaton.

Spyglass Center was pretty empty Monday, but Dowjotas knows to expect a different atmosphere tonight when Montini takes on top seed St. Francis.

“This place will be rocking,” Dowjotas said. “The band will be playing, I’m sure.”

It doesn’t have the sizzle of a match with St. Francis, but Monday’s win was a significant brick as Dowjotas looks to rebuild the Montini program from the ground up.

Montini’s roster is made up mostly of underclassmen — three sophomores and one freshman in its starting lineup — but the few seniors haven’t tasted playoff success much. Montini (14-21) lost a first-round game last year, and the school’s last regional title came in 2004.

“This is a big step for us,” Dowjotas said, “especially for our seniors that haven’t had much regional success.”

Montini blew a 23-20 lead in the first set, but it didn’t seem to bother the Broncos a bit.

The Broncos broke ahead 13-6 in the second set, courtesy of a 9-0 run and built a commanding 13-4 lead in the third.

Sophomore Joyce Balash had 13 kills, including match point, and also served aggressively with 4 aces. Freshman Monica Loftus had 8 kills and sophomore Natalie Lopez 6 for Montini.

“We had to keep our positive energy up,” Balash said. “As long as we kept motivated and kept our mind on the goal I felt like we could win this.”

Dowjotas knows this group might not have bounced back so seamlessly earlier in the year.

“Things like that first game that might have wavered our confidence earlier in the season has slowly dissipated over the period of the season,” Dowjotas said. “All I gotta say is the future is extremely bright.”

Wheaton Academy (18-19-1) overcame 6 service errors to win the first set, but continued to struggle at the the service line and with serve-receive the next two sets.

Unfortunately the shortcomings continued a late-season trend.

“We played good at midseason,” Warriors coach D.A. Nichols said, “and then we had a couple tough matches that we thought we should have won but lost because of unforced errors, and I think it kind of knocked the wind out of our sails. We just haven’t really been able to recover from that. We picked a bad day tonight to have an off day.”

Junior Bianca Cifaldi had 15 kills, including set point in the first, with 5 digs and 2 blocks. She will return next year for a young Warriors team, as will freshman Sydney Vischer, who added 5 kills.

“We have a good base coming back next year,” Nichols said, “so I think they’re going to learn from this. You don’t want to peak too early.”