WW South wins Tiger Classic
Wheaton Warrenville South’s boys volleyball team is “way ahead of schedule,” according to coach Bill Schreier, and that can’t be good news for the rest of the state.
Blame the weather.
“Usually we’re not playing as well and as clean as we are,” Schreier said after his Tigers won the Tiger Classic championship for the first time in a few years. “Honestly, I can attribute it to the good weather, because we don’t have to practice in the back gym with three teams on three nets. We’ve been able to get in (the Orange and Black gym). This spring’s been a great turn of events for us to be able to come in here and just concentrate just on ourselves and just get our 15 (varsity) guys separate. That’s big. It’s real big.”
Instead of sharing the indoor spaces with the WW South baseball and softball teams, the six-time state champion Tigers have had plenty of elbow room to get off to an 11-0 start, wrapping up the 24-team tournament they host with a 25-19, 25-18 victory against Lincoln-Way East (10-2) in Wheaton.
“They’re outstanding,” Griffins coach Kris Fiore said of the Tigers. “They’re very good. They’re so good and athletic you don’t know how good defensively they’re going to be, but they kind of surprised me with their scrambling and picking up balls.”
It didn’t take much for the Tigers to find a little separation in each game.
“We kept fighting back a little bit, but there was that one little spurt at the beginning of the game, inside the first 10 points,” Fiore said. “They’re a great team and that’s going to happen, but if you’re going to beat them, you can’t give up spurts of 3 and 4 because it’s so hard to get your spurt of 3 and 4 back on them with the offense that they have.”
Still, said setter Kit Bruzek, the Tigers are looking to get better, a thought Schreier loves to hear.
“It’s one day at a time and these guys have really embraced that, which is nice to see,” Schreier said. “For them to say their goal is to get better, that’s 99 percent of your battle is to try to convince them they need to work hard. And as we sit here off to a pretty good start, for them to say they need to work harder, it really shows.”
Bruzek finished with 23 assists while directing the Tigers attack that boasts plenty of size with guys like tournament MVP Thomas Jaeschke and Matt Callaway.
“Thomas Jaeschke is always an option,” Bruzek said. “He’ll always be there when the going gets tough. Matt Callaway too. He’s 6-foot-8, you need to use that size. Whenever you have a middle with that much talent and that much ability, you have to use it to your advantage.”
Jaeschke finished with 8 kills, 2 aces and 5 digs, but Tim Zyburt and Nick Smith showed opposing teams can’t concentrate on defending just one player. Zyburt had 7 kills and a block, and Smith had 7 kills and 4 digs. Smith and Bruzek joined Jaeschke on the all-tournament team.
“Some of the swings that some of these guys do, it catches you off guard,” Schreier said. “Thomas had one against Glenbrook North that one of their kids is still trying to figure out where he came from. Nick Smith had one of those in this match where you’ve got your concentration on those big hitters and all of a sudden Nick comes out of that back-row attack and it’s like, wait a minute, where did that just come from?”
Naperville North rebounded from a loss to Lake Park on Thursday to win the tournament’s Silver Division on Saturday. Waubonsie Valley finished fifth in the Gold Division, and the Lancers took seventh.