Stefanski, WW South sweep West Aurora
There wasn’t much West Aurora boys volleyball coach Tolis Koskinaris could say after Wheaton Warrenville South defeated his Blackhawks 25-9, 25-12 Tuesday in Wheaton.
“Wheaton South is good,” Koskinaris said wryly of the six-time state champion and last year’s state runner-up.
West Aurora took a 3-2 lead in Game 1, then watched it disappear in an avalanche of service points from Tigers sophomore Michal Stefanski. By the time Stefanski finally sent a serve long, the Tigers (21-2, 7-0 DuPage Valley Conference) led 17-4.
“It’s really good to see, because he’s been struggling with his serve lately,” Tigers junior Thomas Jaeschke said about Stefanski. “Everything else about his game is amazing. But that’s starting to come around, and he’s just such a good all-around player.”
“He has been trying to get a little bit more consistent from the service line,” Tigers coach Bill Schreier said. “We know that he has a good serve. It’s just that this is one of the first times that it’s actually clicked in that extended way, which was really nice to see, but it’s also a tribute to him about how hard he’s been working in practice to try to get better with it.
“It really kind of carried over, and it set the tone as far as Game 1 was concerned, but it also put them on their heels for Game 2.”
The Tigers ended Game 1 with a Matt Nussbaum kill, then jumped out to leads of 7-1 and 14-2 in Game 2.
“I thought we did all right finding our hits, but they’ve got the X factor with that jump server,” Koskinaris said. “And our passing is really good too, but we haven’t seen a jump server like that all year. Hopefully, we can play a little better when they come to our place.
“Our libero (Patrick Ronan) is all-conference, and that was even giving him a hard time. We’ll be at least prepared, we’ll have seen it next time.”
Stefanski finished with 7 aces, 4 on that Game 1 run.
“They fought back,” Jaeschke said of the Blackhawks (13-9, 3-5). “They kept their composure well, but when you’ve got that serve coming at you, it’s tough to defend.”
Schreier compared Stefanski’s serve to the serve of former Tigers standouts Sean Rooney and Neill Nystrom. That’s some lofty company for the 6-foot-6 foreign exchange student from Poland.
“I think it’s well-deserved. He’s establishing that level of play,” Schreier said.
“He’s a machine out there,” Jaeschke added. “We’re just lucky we got him, that he came to our school. He’s a great player, a great teammate.”
Jaeschke had 7 kills and a block for the Tigers, including the final 2 kills of Game 2. Eric Luhrsen added 5 kills, and an ace, Matt Callaway blocked 5 West Aurora spikes, and senior setter Dave Priest had 19 assists.
“Dave did a good job keeping our hitters engaged, all the hitters,” Schreier said.
Senior James Skaggs led West Aurora with 4 kills.