Girls volleyball: Downers Grove South captures elusive regional title at Addison Trail
One thing had eclipsed Addison Karmik during her four years playing varsity girls volleyball at Downers Grove South - a regional championship.
Not anymore.
The senior setter and her Mustangs teammates dug deep Thursday against West Suburban Gold rival Addison Trail, outlasting the Blazers 25-20, 15-25, 28-26 in a Class 4A regional final.
Fourth-seeded Downers Grove South (18-11) advances to Monday's Glenbard West sectional semifinal against top-seeded Wheaton Warrenville South.
"It's crazy," Karmik said. "I remember my freshman yea we lost in the first or second round and all the seniors were heartbroken and I didn't quite understand why until now. But I knew with the team we had, we are so close together and have such a good bond, that we were going to win it no matter what."
The Mustangs defeated Addison Trail on Oct. 1 to win the conference title, but the Blazers nearly extracted revenge Thursday after taking a 25-24 lead in the third game. But a kill by Alyssa Fountain evened things up. Following an exchanging of points, an Addison Trail kill attempt into the net and an Aleesa Andresen ace ended the match.
"Addison Trail completely transformed itself from the first time we saw them," Downers Grove South coach Kristina Conrad said. "That team put it together. It was tough to find holes on their court and they did a great job finding the littlest of holes on our court.
"But what was exciting is we continue to have different girls step up offensively. This is a big deal. This is the winningest team by percentage since before 2008. This is a huge part of history for our girls, and it's the hardest-working group of girls I've coached."
After seeing a 4-point lead slip away in the opening game, Addison Trail (23-14) bounced back in Game 2 and never trailed from start to finish. Ally Severino finished the match with 11 kills and Jess D'Ambrose had 10.
"One of the things that got us the furthest was our team chemistry," D'Ambrose said. "Our team chemistry was the most special thing. This was one of the best matches we've played. It was just our motivation, we really wanted to win. We never gave up and got a consistent effort from everybody."
Downers Grove South was led by the 8 kills from Kayden Dempsey and 7 kills by Fountain. Rose Dumford added 5 block kills and Andresen and Mikayla Sweeney had 3 aces apiece.