St. Charles East handles Neuqua Valley
St. Charles East's girls volleyball team enjoyed some home cooking Wednesday night.
Playing in front of a vocal crowd, the Saints (1-0) opened their 2021 campaign with a solid 25-16, 25-21 nonconference victory over Neuqua Valley (0-1) that included several staple ingredients of veteran head coach Jennie Kull's teams - strong serving, steady defense, solid serve receiving, setting, and some timely hitting.
On the service line, sophomores Sarah Musial and Amalia Lopez led the way with 3 and 2 aces, respectively, while senior Isabella Mosquera and junior Julia Ferrandino added an ace apiece.
Defensively, junior libero Lia Schneider was seemingly everywhere at times, recording a game-high 15 digs - many of them of the spectacular variety.
"She's amazing - there's no question," Kull said of the 5-foot-9 Schneider. "She is like a wizard on that floor. She's really good."
Musial, who added 6 digs of her own, and Ferrandino contributed 5 and 3 assists, respectively, while helping answer one of Kull's biggest questions heading into the season.
"We were kind of wondering with that being the quarterback position of a volleyball team - the setter - but Sarah (Musial) did a nice job and Julia (Ferrandino) stepped up for us, too," said Kull. "Both of them played well defensively and they ran a nice offense tonight."
Ferrandino simply enjoyed returning to the Saints' home court.
"We worked well together as a team," she said. "We've been training hard the past month and we pulled it together today. It was so much fun. We got our first win on our floor."
St. Charles East also showed some resiliency after trailing throughout the greater half of the second set.
Down 17-10, the Saints went on an 8-1 run to forge a tie at 18-18 following Ferrandino's kill and then grabbed the lead for good on a Lopez ace.
"It was the first varsity action for a lot of them," said Kull. "I had two sophomores out there who hadn't really played in here because last year was so weird.
"This was a good 'see where we are' type of match."
Junior Bryanna Jones paced the Wildcats with 6 kills and a pair of aces, while senior Alison Hoffmann added 5 kills.
"We had two pretty different lineups out there and we were pretty inconsistent," said Neuqua Valley coach Kelly Simon. "The girls are being pretty hard on themselves but we're going to work to build from here and try to get a better connection."
The Wildcats were unable to overcome untimely hitting, passing and service errors.
"You aren't going to win a match with eight service errors," said Simon, "although I love that they're aggressive. They're typically much more consistent than that. We weren't as connected as we need to be, but we'll be better.
"I'm excited for what the season holds."