Lake Park rallies to beat South Elgin

The Lake Park boys volleyball team struggled with its hitting in the first game Tuesday.

But the Lancers found their swing and rallied to beat host South Elgin, 17-25, 25-17, 25-21.

“We realized we were making some errors in Game 1 and came out in Game 2 fired up,” Lake Park’s Trace Szczygiel said. “We got a couple points (in Game 2) right away and were feeling pretty good after that.”

The opening game was tied at 7-7 before South Elgin (7-8,0-2) scored seven of the next eight points, the final three coming on Lake Park hitting errors. Back-to-back blocks from Sean Saxton, who finished with 7 blocks, gave the Storm a 17-9 lead.

Another hitting error by the Lancers (14-2, 2-0), gave South Elgin game point. The Storm capitalized on its second game point, getting a Trevor Aguiniga kill for the Game 1 victory.

“We stayed in there and stayed aggressive,” Storm coach Adam Plach said. “Game 2 was more that (the Lancers) woke up. I don’t think we played that much worse or different than Game 1. They stepped up what they were doing.” Lake Park scored five of the first six points of the second game and never trailed. The Storm got within two on three occasions, but would not get closer. Szczygiel had 6 of his match-high 13 kills in the game. Michal Ragan added all five of his kills in Game 2.

“We were able to turn it on when we needed to,” Lancers coach Brad Baker said. “We were just battling ourselves.”

The Lancers took a 3-0 lead in the final game as the Storm had a pair of errors and a block from Jeremy Mark. South Elgin answered and took a 5-4 lead on a Saxton block. That would be the Storm’s only lead.

Lake Park led 21-20 then got kills from Matthew Ciaglia and Mark for a 23-20 lead. A combined block from Mark and Eddie Keesecker gave Lake Park match point. A point later, Keesecker had his 10th kill to end the match.

“We’ve had a lot of inconsistencies in our play,” Plach said. “If we could like this or the way we played against Waubonsie night in and night out, we’d be in a little better shape than we are right now.”

Matthew McCown had 29 assists for Lake Park.

Nick Pawlowski finished with 21 assists and 8 digs for the Storm. Jake Mendel added 6 kills. Saxton and Matt Gill each had 5 kills.

Waubonsie Valley d. Bartlett: Russell Martin had 15 kills, 3 blocks and 8 digs and David Upp added 9 kills and 4 digs but Bartlett (11-7, 1-2) fell to Waubonsie Valley in the Upstate Eight, 21-25, 25-16, 25-23. Andrew Harris had 18 assists and Michael Marciniak added 4 blocks for the Hawks.