Batavia's Kinane finds home at Loyola
Batavia volleyball player Stephanie Kinane was playing in a tournament over the President's Day weekend with her club team when Loyola assistant coach Scott Leserman, scouting the action, extended an invitation to come up and see the campus.
Kinane did. A match was made.
Last Thursday the Bulldogs' record-setting libero verbally committed to the Ramblers' program, and she's planning on signing her Letter of Intent on April 11.
She liked just about everything about the campus on Chicago's north side, enough to distance Loyola from other programs she had interest in, like Marquette, Valparaiso and Elmhurst.
“It's beautiful there,” said Kinane, a Daily Herald All-Area selection both her junior and senior seasons. “It was everything I was looking for, and the scholarship, of course, definitely came into hand.
“The overall feel of the campus (was good) and my parents (Patrick and Peggy), of course, want to watch me play, so it was a good distance back and forth.”
She would have had fun at Marquette, too, since her fellow co-captain, Mary Niles, is there, and Kinane's own sister, Julie, went there. Niles graduated early from Batavia and already is up in Wisconsin on scholarship, taking classes and playing in Marquette's spring season.
“Their coach kind of looked at me after recruiting Mary,” Kinane said. “I really like their coaching staff and their campus was beautiful, but it just wasn't the right fit for me — as much as I would have loved to have joined Mary again another four years.”
It was a good four years at Batavia for Kinane.
The Bulldogs' 2010 player of the year for the entire program, she set school records for digs in a season three consecutive years, capping her senior season with 408 to finish the Batavia's career record of 1,046, which was 301 over the prior record.
The three-year starter made Waubonsie Valley's all-tournament team last season and her 24 digs in a match at the quality Maine West Pumpkin Tournament set a school record.
She was an ace both serving and receiving. Her 668 service points are the school record, as she missed landing only 6 out of 371 serves with 32 aces, a 98.4 percent success rate that trails only Northern Illinois' Kristin Hoffman, the MAC setter of the year last season, at Batavia.
Kinane's career 93.2 percent on serve-receive ranks second in school history, and she broke the season mark for serve-receive quality.
Finally, she earned both all-Upstate Eight Conference River Division and Batavia's most inspirational player honors in 2011.
Kinane, who played on Sports Performance's 18 Red team — she's playing in a tournament in Kentucky this weekend — said one of the best things about her teammates, and herself, is they never quit.
“I'm definitely going to miss all my friends and especially the coach I've had for my three years on varsity, Lori Trippi-Payne,” Kinane said. “She's definitely helped me so much with the recruiting process and she's done a lot for the program, which makes it successful. She definitely cares about the program.”
Speedburner
Usual suspect on the track Alex Rindone, a Marmion graduate and Augustana junior, won the 200-meter dash and placed second in the 60-meter at the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin men's indoor meet on Feb. 25.
Another leader board veteran at Augie, Kaneland grad Phil Christensen, won the shot put. Other locals with all-conference finishes included Augie athletes Mike Tovar (Mooseheart) and David Voland (Batavia), and meet-winning North Central College's Andrew Carlson (St. Charles North), Matt Souvannasing (West Aurora) and Bai Kabba (Batavia).
On Monday, qualifiers for the Division III national indoor meet were announced. They included Kabba as part of both North Central's distance medley and 1,600-meter relay teams.
Way back in December, Kabba was honored with his teammates on the Cardinals' 800 and 1,600 relays for running the fastest times in those events, on back-to-back days at the Drake Relays, in all of DIII for the 2011 outdoor season.
Good things happened
West Aurora 2009 graduate Mario Gonzalez, a redshirt sophomore wrestler at the University of Illinois, qualified for the NCAA Division I championships March 15-17 in St. Louis. He's the No. 7 seed at 197 pounds.
Gonzalez, who as a Blackhawk earned three all-state finishes including the 3A title at 189 pounds his senior year, got in due to his victory at the Big Ten Championships March 4 at Purdue.
Gonzalez entered the meet seeded fifth and ranked 17th in the country at 197, and his championship-round opponent, Matt Powless of Indiana, was seeded second and ranked third in his weight class. In a prior meeting on Jan. 29 at Indiana, Powless had defeated Gonzalez 11-3.
On Sunday, however, Gonzalez turned the tables with a quick, offensive start, up 4-0, and ended up dealing Powless his first defeat in two months, 10-4. According to the InterMat website, Gonzalez (23-7) moved ahead in the overall rankings to No. 7 in the country and bumped Powless down to No. 8.
In an interview on the Illini website, Gonzalez said: “This time I just went out there, let loose, really, just had fun and good things happen.”
doberhelman@dailyherald.com