St. Edward advances to sectional final
WINNEBAGO — If the St. Edward girls volleyball team felt any sort of panic or nervousness after losing the first game of its sectional semifinal match here Tuesday night, the Green Wave sure didn’t show it.
Instead, St. Edward roared back to beat Lena-Winslow 26-28, 25-19, 25-16 to earn a berth in Thursday night’s Class 2A Winnebago sectional final against Timothy Christian (34-3).
The Green Wave (22-13) will be seeking the program’s fifth sectional championship (first since 2008) and fourth under eighth-year head coach Jaime Dovichi. Timothy Christian has never won a sectional title in girls volleyball. The Trojans defeated Guerin 25-13, 25-13 in Tuesday’s second semifinal.
Thursday’s winner earns a trip to Saturday’s Lisle supersectional to meet the winner of the Chicago Christian sectional. The host school meets Chicago Noble Street Charter for the title there on Thursday.
“The first game (Lena-Winslow) played a soft game with a lot of tips and rolls and we were just sitting back waiting,” said Dovichi of the upstart Pirates, who ended their season 17-21.
“They got comfortable and we were getting back on our heels. Going into the second game we knew what to expect.”
St. Edward jumped to a 5-0 lead in Game 1 and maintained the lead at 17-12 when the Pirates made their comeback. Le-Win scored 5 straight points to make it a 17-17 tie. From that point, there were seven ties and three lead changes before the Pirates’ Jo Beukema and Cortney Haight combined on a block, then junior Heidi Gahm placed a kill between two St. Edward players to give Le-Win the come-from-behind win.
“We let down our guard and we weren’t playing like ourselves,” said St. Edward senior setter Katie Ayello, who delivered 28 assists on the night while continuing to play with two broken fingers. “They took over the game.”
But then it became St. Edward’s turn to take over. Playing with an obvious sense of purpose, and with their season on the line, the Green Wave never trailed in Game 2. With the game still nip-and-tuck at 11-9, Ayello stepped to the service line and St. Edward ripped off 7 straight points to forge ahead 18-9. Ayello had 2 aces during the run and senior Sarah Norman and sophomore Cory Kelly added a combined block, while Lena-Winslow helped out with 3 hitting errors.
The Pirates tried to mount another comeback and drew to within 5 at 24-19 but after a St. Edward timeout, Lena served out of bounds to force a Game 3.
The Pirates were the early aggressor in the deciding game, jumping out to a 7-3 lead. But with the game tied at 10, St. Edward used a Pirate error to go ahead 11-10. A Lena net violation and a Callie Johnson block made it 13-10 and St. Edward’s lead was never again threatened. In fact, from that point, Lena-Winslow never again scored more than a single point in a row as the Wave wore the Pirates down at the net.
The Wave’s biggest lead was 23-15 and they won the match when Lena couldn’t handle a smash from Norman, who had 10 kills and 12 digs for the match.
“We had some nerves and we got down but then we started playing our game and stepped it up,” Norman said. “We played smarter with the ball. We just had to stay calm.”
Sophomore Katie Swanson had 14 kills and 7 digs for St. Edward, while Johnson added 10 kills and sophomore Allison Krug 28 digs. Junior Rena Ranallo had 2 kills and 14 digs.
“The third game we started Katie Swanson in the left front and it didn’t matter much in the beginning but it did the second time around,” Dovichi said.
Dovichi now has her squad two wins away from a trip to Redbird Arena and the Final Four, a position she didn’t feel the relatively young Green Wave had a chance to be in.
“I was not expecting this,” she said. “I don’t know if you can call us a Cinderella or not. We’re young but we do have three seniors in Callie Johnson, Sarah Norman and Katie Ayello who have been awesome role models.”