Geneva tops West Chicago to halt mini skid
Geneva already was on its way to an Upstate Eight River Division win over West Chicago Tuesday night when senior Kelsey Wicinski stepped to the service line midway through Game 2.
With her grandma, aunt, cousin and a good neighbor friend in the stands cheering her on, the Maryland-bound libero added an exclamation point to the straight sets win, firing 3 aces in a 4-point run to open up an 8-point spread on the Vikings' way to a 25-19, 25-14 victory.
"Our new thing we did is coach (Annie) Seitelman is giving us zones so that really helped to be able to place it," Wicinski said of the serves that handcuffed the Wildcats.
Geneva (17-5, 5-1) was eager to return to the court after a pair of tough losses last week including one to St. Charles East that likely decided the conference championship.
"It was a little surprising. We were hoping we would stay with them a little bit," Wicinski said of the Saints. "Winning or not it ws kind of a tossup but we were a little disappointed in how we played.
"We really worked on ball control and limiting our errors because in the couple games last week we made a lot of service errors. Just cleaning that up and serving aggressively."
West Chicago (8-17, 1-5) had its moments in the first set. Freshman Laura Katarzynski's kill gave the Wildcats a 6-5 lead, which turned out to be their last.
But they stayed close, tying the score at 12 when Katarzynski tooled a ball. Grace Loberg served three straight points to help Geneva open a lead, and Ally Barrett increased it with back-to-back kills to make it 21-14.
Kyley Thompson hit down the line for a winner for the 24th point before Hannah Lanasa ended the game with a kill.
Thompson's kill got Geneva off to a quick start in Game 2, and Mikayla Lanasa set Loberg and Maddie Courter for a couple more big swings to make it 4-1. West Chicago tied the score three times, the final deadlock at 7-7 before Geneva took control with a 14-4 run that included Wicinski's strong serving and some breakdowns from a young West Chicago team.
"We've been taking our licks because I think we are young," West Chicago coach Kris Hasty said. "We play a freshman, three sophomores, it's hard. We don't have a lot of experience. But they fight. Like tonight they miss 7 or 8 serves, 13 unforced errors, we could have cut down on that. It doesn't help when you play a decent team on top of that."
Geneva ended the match when Megan Cameron set Ally Mullen. That was one of 8 assists for Cameron who ran the offense with Mikayla Lanasa (18 assists).
Barrett led a balanced attack with 6 kills while Courter and Thompson both had 5. Loberg and Wicinski tied for the team lead with 5 digs.
"A win is a win so that always makes you happy," Seitelman said. "They are still trying to find that consistency. Keeping that intensity high no matter who is across the net from you. As you've seen us this fall sometimes there's moments of greatness and sometimes there's moments of not so great. Just trying to find that consistency especially as now we get into crunch time of the Mizuno Cup this weekend, and regionals are just a few short weeks away."