WW South pictures victory against Glenbard East
Forget the big picture. Wheaton Warrenville South’s boys volleyball team is back to playing them one match at a time.
On Tuesday the undefeated host Tigers (39-0) moved on to the state quarterfinals by defeating Glenbard East for the fifth time this year 25-19, 25-17 for the championship of the Wheaton Warrenville South sectional.
The victory was a double redemption of sorts for the Tigers, who were not happy with their performance in the semifinals against Downers Grove North last Friday. The Tigers have also been somewhat obsessed all year with washing away the bad taste of last year’s sectional final loss to Naperville North.
“There was a lot of pressure on us last Friday,” said Wheaton Warrenville South coach Bill Schreier. “We may have gotten ahead of ourselves and started looking at the big picture. We were chasing the elephants in the room that people didn’t want to mention like the undefeated record, No. 1 ranking or past championship teams. Today we focused on playing against Glenbard East and that was it. I thought we executed very well tonight. ”
“Since our first match of the season, coach has been trying to keep us focused on the immediate task and not looking at the big picture,” said outside hitter Tim Zyburt. “Last year was a huge disappointment, so we’ve been trying to concentrate on putting together a string of one-game winning streaks. We’re treating tonight’s win as a one-game winning streak.”
In the first game Glenbard East (32-7) came out with tremendous energy and had the match tied at 5-5 and then at 9-9 before the Tigers put together a pair of successful service rotations behind Kit Bruzek and Thomas Jaeschke that each yielded four points and stretched the WW South lead to 20-12.
“We said we wanted to make a little run in the middle of Game 1 and we did,” Schreier said. “That run got us a little separation and allowed us to get in control and put them on the heels. We knew we were going to earn our victory in Game 2 against a very good Glenbard East team and we did.”
“Glenbard East played really well tonight,” added Thomas Jaeschke, who led the Tigers with 10 kills and added 4 digs. “It was just a good match. Again, our team chemistry is the key and tonight our serve-receive was really good, Dan Eastman and Nick Smith were doing a great job of passing the ball.”
Smith and Matt Callaway each had 6 kills, Zyburt came in with 5, while Eastman had 5 digs. Setter Bruzek had 26 assists, an ace, 2 kills and 3 blocks.
Matt Ploke led the Rams with 7 kills, while Tim Shenkin had 3 kills, 4 blocks, 2 aces and 8 assists.
“We’ve been playing extremely well, but I wish we could have played a little better tonight,” said Glenbard East coach Marci Maier. “We started well, but in the middle of the first game they got on a little run and it was over. In the second game we never got the flow back that we had at the beginning, but hats off to Wheaton Warrenville South. We wish them the best coming out of our sectional.”