Naperville Central makes Naperville North work for DVC triumph
Naperville Central didn't succeed in stopping red-hot Naperville North, but the Redhawks were happy to make things a little difficult for the Huskies for a night.
These days that's all most teams can ask for against the Huskies.
Naperville North took a 24-26, 25-20, 25-18 DuPage Valley Conference girls volleyball victory Thursday night at No. 1-ranked Naperville North to run its record to 16-1, 2-0 in the DVC.
"We have a young team. We have only one senior on the roster, and we've done some really good things to this point in the season," Redhawks coach Brie Isaacson said. "We've had some nice wins, we've had some tough losses, but there's no way to get experience without playing, right?
"What I asked my team for tonight was to come out and play as hard as we could regardless of what the score was."
The score was close throughout the first game, with 17 ties and 6 lead changes, with the Redhawks overcoming 21-17 and 24-23 deficits to rally for the win.
"We went down, we went up, we maintained and we just kept battling," Isaacson said. "And we got a little bit lucky at the end and we were able to kind of squeak out that first set. But that's sometimes what happens when you work hard. You get a little bit lucky."
Naperville North never lost focus, however.
"After the first game, no, we had confidence that we would come back and win the second. It was all confidence," Huskies senior Molly Russell said.
"I think we just cut our errors down," added Huskies coach Jennifer Urban. "In the first (set) we had quite a few service errors and hitting errors. We definitely picked that up in Sets 2 and 3."
The Redhawks (13-6, 2-1) stayed close again the first few points of Game 2 before the Huskies took a 5-4 lead and expanded the lead to 13-7. Naperville Central pulled close at 15-14, but again the Huskies pulled away.
"Certainly we knew that Naperville North is a really solid team. We knew it wasn't going to be over after the first set and we tried to continue to battle and unfortunately we just came out a little bit short," Isaacson said.
"We picked up our mental toughness and we told ourselves that no balls could hit the ground without us diving out for it," added Russell, who had 20 digs.
The Huskies held control of the third game from start to finish, never trailing.
"We kind of just keep pulling out all these wins together," Russell said.