Girls volleyball: Montini, Geneva advance to sectional final

Montini held serve, literally, in the first Class 3A St. Francis girls volleyball sectional semifinal match Tuesday in Wheaton.

The top seed hit seven service aces, five of them coming from senior setter Avalyn DeKeyser, in a 25-14, 25-18 win over fifth-seeded Wheaton Academy.

“Who’s counting,” DeKeyser said with a laugh. “I just wanted more.

“I was just thinking that we beat them (Wheaton Academy) before (on Sept. 8), but it’s hard to beat the same team twice in one year. You just come in with the thought that you could lose, but you play to win.”

Montini improved to 28-10 on the year. The Warriors finished with a 21-12 mark.

“Our team has proven that we can win games,” said Wheaton Academy coach Cody Nielsen. “I had every ounce of faith in them. I’m proud of them.”

Warriors senior Addie VanderLugt, who has been in the program all four years, played her final prep match along with five other seniors on the Warriors’ roster.

“I’m just so grateful for all the friends I made,” she said, “We persevered so much throughout the whole season. We grew as a team, got to know each other on a deeper level, and won some games.”

Montini coach Erik Vogt said the difference in the game was the maturity of his team.

“We have a lot of players who play a lot of different positions,” Vogt said. “We’ve used probably over twenty lineups this season, and have run every type of offense that you can think of. That’s a testament to our players.”

In the second semifinal match of the night, Geneva libero Lexi Meives was hoping to make it back to the sectional final. The Vikings were there last season where Meives, a junior, and her teammates fell just short with a title loss to Nazareth.

Now, as a senior, she’ll get another chance at the crown. Third-seeded Geneva defeated Timothy Christian 25-15, 25-22. The Vikings face Montini at 6 p.m. Thursday for the St. Francis sectional championship.

“Honestly, tonight, I just trusted my teammates,” Meives said. “We’ve worked on communication all year, and just knowing that they have my back and I have theirs is really what carried us through this game.”

Six-foot Geneva junior outside hitter Emma Peterson had a match-high 16 kills. Her play down the stretch in the second set helped the Vikings hold off a spirited Timothy Christian rally.

The second-seeded Trojans closed to within 23-21, and looked poised to creep even closer until a great dig from Meives and a kill from Peterson on the next point gave the Vikings (28-10) some breathing room.

“Our team has a lot of goals this year,” Peterson said, “and getting this win under our belt gives us a lot of confidence.”

Timothy Christian (28-7) co-head coach Scott Piersma said after the game that he told his team, “don’t let this loss sour anything (about the season).

“We still won a fourth straight conference championship, and a fifth straight regional,” he said. “We did a lot of good things, beating big schools, beating teams some people thought we had no business playing with, being a school of only 450 kids.”