Girls volleyball: A good warmup match for Neuqua Valley

With a big night planned for Tuesday, the Neuqua Valley girls volleyball team wanted to prepare with a solid effort against Downers Grove South, and the mission was indeed accomplished on Monday.

The Wildcats stormed out to a 17-5 lead on a young Mustangs squad with a fast-paced, balanced attack and went on to sweep the visitors 25-15, 25-15. Up next is the DuPage Valley Conference opener at rival Metea Valley in the "Win With Pink Pinkout," a fundraiser for the Side Out Foundation and to create awareness for the fight against breast cancer.

Neuqua Valley, now 6-2 on the year with losses to strong teams from Benet and York, proved just too tough for a Downers Grove South team that dropped to 3-7 on the year. The Wildcats served well, got strong play from middles Faith Johnson and Lauren Young, flexed their muscles on the outside and setters Maria Mayhew and Rachel Pu both were solid.

"We haven't had a game where we played that consistent all year so far before tonight. It was pretty nice to have it before a big game tomorrow," said senior outside hitter Shannon Skyrd, who had 3 kills and 5 digs. "Last year I only played three rotations instead of all six, so having those extra three rotations throws in a lot more responsibility on my part."

With plenty of senior leadership back, Neuqua Valley hopes to contend for a conference title, so it's nice to be clicking heading into Tuesday's opener.

"That was the game plan (to take care of business) and we needed to get our middle more active tonight," Neuqua Valley coach Kelly Simon said. "We came out with a pretty quick tempo, which is definitely what we need to do tomorrow night against Metea. We wanted tonight to be a good night heading into tomorrow night's match."

Johnson had 4 kills and 2 blocks, while Mayhew led the team with 6 kills and 11 assists and outside Bella Aguilar added 5 kills. The Wildcats closed the first set with three kills and an ace to account for their final four points and then broke from an 8-5 lead in the second set to build a 17-10 lead following kills from Johnson and Skyrd.

"The team's been playing great this year. I feel like we have a lot of team chemistry and that's really adding to our success," said Johnson, just one of many team leaders this fall. "I feel like I have to step up but not be the main leader because everybody's a leader on the team. I just have to be a more vocal leader to add to the team chemistry."

The Wildcats made it hard for Downers Grove South to get any consistent rhythm on offense, but Courtney Jackson did tally 4 kills and Sydney White and Lucy Dumford each had 3.

"We're just young this year," Mustangs coach Trisha Kurth said. "We've always come to Neuqua and our defense sort of blows them away. We just couldn't do that this time around. Their offense is a little bit fast and we've got some young players, so it's hard. We just have to get the ball to our other hitters more often. There's so much room for growth on my team."