Now hear this: Meadows ready for postseason
End-of-the-year tournaments can be the forum for a team to make a statement heading into the postseason.
If that’s the case, Rolling Meadows spoke up loud and clear Saturday.
The Mustangs won 4 of 5 matches at the Fremd Invitational, losing only to eventual champion West Aurora, to claim the runner-up trophy.
Both Meadows and the Blackhawks finished the tourney with 4-1 records but West Aurora won the title by virtue of their head-to-head victory.
“This was our best performance of the year,” said Kevin Lannon, the only senior on the youthful Mustangs roster. “It’s nice to end the season this way.”
Meadows claimed second position overall with a final match 25-22, 25-22 victory over Mid-Suburban East co-champion Elk Grove.
“We’ve been working hard in practice on eliminating our mistakes and trying to capitalizing on the mistakes of our opponents,” said Lannon. “A day like we had today gives us a lot of confidence heading into the playoffs, especially considering Elk Grove is in our sectional.”
Mustangs coach Tim Piatek gave kudos to middle Venkat Ganne, saying that the junior “had a great tourney.”
Ganne swatted 13 kills on 15-of-15 hitting in the Meadows win over York.
“When he excels,” said Piatek, “it creates such a different climate on our team. Venkat has the potential to be a leader, and when he plays well, we get excited.
“But I’m proud of everyone today — this is just what we needed heading into the postseason. Our goal since day one has been to win a regional, something we haven’t done since 2004,and this (effort today) puts us in the right mind-set to achieve that goal.”
The Grenadiers finished 3-2 at the meet, losing an intense 3-game match to West Aurora. After splitting the first two sets, Elk Grove led 14-11 in the deciding game but fell 17-15 to the champs as a great effort on serve by Joey Schwerdtfeger led the Blackhawks to the win.
“We’ve been so close in so many matches against good teams this year (only to fall short), it gives us a lot of satisfaction to beat a great team like Elk Grove,” said Schwerdtfeger.
York scored wins over South Elgin and Fremd, while the Vikings capped the day on a high note by giving West Aurora their only loss of the day in the invite finale.
Fremd showed a lot of heart by rallying for a 20-25, 25-13, 18-16 victory as setter David Kim had 13 assists and 9 digs, and senior outside hitter John Morrison added 10 kills.
Senior middle John Vandercar had the final block kill for the win.
“We made a great push at the end today,” said the senior. “We’ve been coming together as a team.”