Glenbard South gets valuable experience

With a young team every bit of regional experience matters.

Glenbard South played five freshmen and two sophomores in Wednesday's 49-25 victory against Robeson (9-10) at the Class 3A Nazareth regional semifinals, experience that will come in handy when the Raiders (16-11) meet host Nazareth in Friday's final.

"It's pretty great," freshman center Sydney Bauman said. "I never expected us to grow this fast, to win by this much. I'm really enjoying my time and I don't want the season to end so fast."

The longer they can drag out this season, the better off they'll be next season.

"It's always a different atmosphere in the postseason, so you try to take advantage of that and get them a taste of it so next year and the year after they're still hungry," Raiders coach Julie Fonda said.

But first they hope to get at least one more win, a victory that will earn them another home game. The Raiders host a sectional next week.

The Raiders took control of the game early, leading 19-5 after one quarter, 34-11 after two.

"We just wanted to score right off the bat, blow it open and say this is ours, not theirs," Bauman said.

Thirteen Raiders played, 11 of them scored, with Bauman leading the way with 9 points. Junior Tomei Ball added 7 points and junior Madison Rankin came off the bench to score 6 and grab 5 rebounds.

"It was a tough one," said Robeson coach Larry Dawson. "They're deep. We only have seven kids that we rotate. It was pretty tough. We couldn't get anything going. They play great defense, so they had a great game plan for us."

The Raiders struggled a little to play as well in the second half as they did the first.

"It's hard to keep the momentum going your way and try to get the kids to ignore the scoreboard, not be satisfied, continue to work," Fonda said.

The young Raiders will continue to work against Nazareth on Friday.

"There's a lot of really bright futures, and I'll be excited about it," Fonda said, "but we're going to finish up this year up strong and do our best to get as much experience as we can."