St. Edward snags 2A regional title
SOUTH BELOIT — St. Edward’s girls volleyball team managed to put a positive spin on everything here Thursday night, which isn’t that hard after winning a regional title as a fifth seed.
The Green Wave pulled a second straight upset, downing No. 2 seed Rockford Lutheran, 25-23, 25-15, to win the Class 2A South Beloit regional.
St. Edward (21-13) will take on Lena-Winslow at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Winnebago sectional.
“You’ve got to beat everybody in the region,” said Wave coach Jaime Dovichi of the low seed.
Perhaps the seed was due to St. Edward’s youth; the Wave have 7 sophomores on the roster.
“They haven’t had a chance to be nervous,” Dovichi said. “They just know to go out there and play their hardest, and they just get the job done. I don’t think the pressure really gets to them. They just know to go out there and play.”
Katie Swanson had 8 kills and Allison Kruk came up with 17 digs to lead the Green Wave. Sarah Norman added 6 kills.
Setter Katie Ayello, who had 14 assists, returned to the court with broken fingers on her right hand heavily wrapped. But even that turned into a positive.
“I think that we are a lot faster-paced because I can’t really get the ball that high,” she said. “My sets are a lot faster and we’ve been able to adjust to that. I think it gets the other team off-track a little bit when we play fast.”
The Wave controlled the second game almost from the start. They raced out to a 6-0 lead with Ayello at the service line. After the Crusaders tied it at 10-10, the Wave rattled off another 6 points, most with Callie Johnson serving, and never looked back.
“We had momentum from the first game, and we used that to keep going,” said Swanson.
Game 1 featured wild momentum swings. The Crusaders rode the serving of Sam Rundlbade and the blocking of Rachel Roth and Dakotah Hazlewood to a 6-1 lead. The Wave roared back to lead 14-11.
Lutheran tied it at 18 and 23, but a service error by the Crusaders and an ace by Swanson clinched it for the Wave, who claimed the 13th regional title in program history.