Glenbard North turns tables on West Aurora

For the second time this season, West Aurora and Glenbard North needed a third game to determine the outcome.

West Aurora coach Tolis Koskinaris’ team had come out on top against the Panthers in the championship of its own tournament earlier this month.

This time, however, Glenbard North was the victor in a 25-21, 21-25, 25-23 win over the visiting Blackhawks, moving the Panthers to 8-9 overall and 3-2 in the DuPage Valley Conference. The Blackhawks fell to 10-5 overall and 3-2 in the DVC.

“For whatever reason, every time we play Glenbard North, it’s always close and it always goes three games,” Koskinaris said. “We’re having a great season right now, but there’s no such thing as an easy DVC game. They’re all competitive.”

Glenbard North took advantage of a quick start by jumping out to the early lead in each of the three games. The Panthers led 7-3 to start Game 1 and led by as many as eight on three occasions.

Game 2 was much of the same as Glenbard North had an 8-3 lead to start with three of those points coming off Blackhawks errors.

“We were frustrated because in every one of the three games we were down and for whatever reason we just couldn’t lift our intensity today,” Koskinaris said.

However, game two saw West Aurora senior Binali Khurshidov step up his play as he finished with 3 kills, 4 blocks and an ace en route to the 25-21 Blackhawks victory.

“Binali is a senior and a leader,” Koskinaris said. He knows when he needs to play better and today, he realized that we needed him because Glenbard North came out with a lot of energy.”

Both teams carried that energy into the third game, but again, the Panthers took the early lead thanks to a serving error and two straight hitting errors by West Aurora that gave Glenbard North a 3-0 lead.

“It was kind of the same thing as the last time we played them in that we won the first game, lost the second, and the third game was close,” Glenbard North coach Dedra DeBenedetti said. “I just told the team that we weren’t going to do what we did last time and that we would play our game.”

After a block by West Aurora’s Joe Frommert gave the Blackhawks a 23-22 lead, three straight West Aurora errors were the difference in the Panthers’ winning the deciding game.

Glenbard North’s Mathew Pemberton finished with 4 kills in Game 3, controlling the front of the net for much of the contest.

“He’s an aggressive player who wants the ball,” DeBenedetti said. “He did a great job of reading the blocks and made some big plays.”