Boys volleyball: Naperville Central feeds Davis, Stenmark in victory over Naperville North
When you're down, it's a good idea to put the ball in the hands of your best players.
That's what visiting Naperville Central did in the second set of a 22-25, 25-17, 26-24 boys volleyball win at Naperville North on Thursday evening.
After falling 25-22 in a sloppy first set, Redhawks coach Roger Strausberger decided to force feed the ball to Benedictine University commit John Davis and sophomore Carter Stenmark.
To say it was merely just a good idea would be an understatement.
"(Davis) was just terminating balls there in the second set," Strausberger said. "And then Carter (Stenmark) was playing a lot smarter in the second set there as well. Those two guys get a lot of balls for us, so we need them to be efficient."
Five of the Redhawks' first seven points in the second set were the result of kills from Davis. The two teams played even through seven points before Naperville Central (20-12, 2-4 DuPage Valley Conference) grabbed the lead at 9-8 and then went on a 7-2 run before a Huskies timeout. Stenmark notched five kills in the set as the Redhawks cruised 25-17. But it was Davis' start and Stenmark's end that set the tone in the second set.
Stenmark finished the match with a team-high 16 kills on 32 attempts. Davis notched 13 kills while senior Felix Egharevba, who was playing his first game since recovering from a leg injury, had 4 blocks and 6 kills. All three players should really buy senior setter Timothy Folliard a sandwich after the game for distributing 32 total assists, which allowed for their gaudy numbers.
Fittingly, Davis nailed down the winning kill from the left side to help his Redhawks edge the Huskies 26-24 in the ultracompetitive final game.
"Guys were playing so hard and that's really all I can ask of them," Naperville North coach Nathan Bornancin said after the game. "It's really hard to think what I would do different because the guys were playing so hard and I'm really proud of them."
Down 24-22 in the final game, Huskies junior John Jaworski slammed down a kill and junior Henry Zhou followed that up with a block to knot the game at 24. But Naperville Central responded with two kills in a row to notch their second conference victory of the season.
Zhou and Jaworski led the way for the Huskies (15-17, 2-4) with 7 kills apiece, with Jaworski adding 14 digs for good measure. It was an evening full of lessons for a young Naperville North team still looking to find its way.
"Being so young, this is great experience for us on how to battle especially after losing the second set and our guys kind of questioning themselves and the confidence wavering," Bornancin said. "But we came out really well in that third set, it was back and forth. I really felt like it could have gone either way in the end."
In the end it not surprisingly went Davis' way as he slammed the winning point into the gymnasium floor.