Cary-Grove outlasts Stevenson for state bid
Cary-Grove unleashed its inner beast to head off the comeback kids from Stevenson at the Class 4A Lake Zurich girls volleyball supersectional Saturday night.
Stevenson lost Game 1 only to roar back to win the second game — the same script the never-say-die Patriots followed in their previous three postseason victories.
The seasoned Trojans didn’t cave. Instead, the reigning Class 4A runner-up stopped targeting Stevenson’s weak spots with tips and dinks and started swinging with all their might.
“Between games I was like ‘Enough! Let’s go back to Cary-Grove volleyball and let’s just swing and bring the power that we know we have,’” Cary-Grove coach Patty Langanis said. “Stevenson was too quick for our off-speed game. Once we got our power back and our serve receive settled down a little bit we got back in the groove of things.”
The Trojans raced to a 5-0 lead in the decisive third game, powered by a crushed opening spike from Creighton-bound hitter Melanie Jereb (13 kills) and two powerful swings by Illinois State recruit Ashley Rosch (9 kills). They built their lead as high as 20-10 before settling for a 25-10, 22-25, 25-16 triumph.
The victory advances Cary-Grove (36-4) to the Final Four at Redbird Arena in Normal for the third straight season. The Trojans will face Marist (34-6), which defeated Lyons 25-22, 21-25, 25-23, Friday at approximately 9 p.m. St. Charles East (34-6) will play Benet (37-3) in the earlier semifinal.
“It feels great like it does every year, and it’s amazing to be able to do this as a senior,” said Rosch, the lone holdover from Cary-Grove’s 2009 state title team. “ I’m really excited. It’s like all of our hard work paid off.”
Cary-Grove blitzed Stevenson (31-9) with a 13-1 run to open the match. Two aces by Trojans co-captain Korey Kronforst in the first 5 points set the tone, and Stevenson struggled to gain a side out against the wicked, diving jump serve of Jereb. She served 7 straight points.
Slow starts don’t rattle the procrastinating Pats, who on cue scored the first 4 points of Game 2, thanks to 2 kills apiece from junior Lize Pflugradt and senior Michelle Schroeder. Cary-Grove tied the game 7-7, but Stevenson pulled away with an 11-5 run, highlighted by 3 of junior Rachel Baader’s 11 kills and a vicious termination of a Hannah Kay quick set by junior middle hitter Jenna Radtke.
““We’re a really big second-game team,” Radtke said. “Once we get all our nerves out we play our best, blocking and hitting. We’ve done it so many times that we think we can do anything. We’re a mentally strong team.”
Cary-Grove made the Patriots nervous when they trimmed the Game 2 deficit to 23-21 on a block kill by Jereb, but Baader sandwiched 2 back-row kills around a Jereb tip to even the match.
“We have excellent leadership on this team and the girls battled back,” Stevenson coach Tim Crow said. “We played an excellent, excellent game of volleyball that second game. We played great.
“The third game we just gave up a big lead in the beginning. When you’re playing a team that strong, you get down 7 points and it’s difficult to fight back against.”
The Trojans took a 14-7 lead in the decisive game when Mallory Wilczynski fisted a 50-50 ball to open space. Setter Jess Bartczyszyn followed with one of her 3 dump kills that caught the Pats’ defense off guard.
“Once we knew it was now or go home we really stepped it up and played our game again,” said C-G libero Nicole Schuh, who made 14 digs to go with 13 by Kronforst.
Junior Alex Larsen, inserted into Game 3 by Langanis to increase Cary-Grove’s power quotient, pounded her second kill of the game to make it 24-13. Jereb clinched the supersectional hardware four points later by smacking a ball to the corner.
It’s a huge goal when you play in this program to get to state, but it’s still the best thing ever to be able to go,” Jereb said.
The significance of winning a third straight supersectional was not lost on Cary-Grove’s coach.
“It’s something as a coach and as a program you dream about and wonder if it’s something your program would ever be able to accomplish,” Langanis said. “When I first started at Cary-Grove I don’t think those teams could even comprehend that this could be the future of Cary-Grove. And now it’s becoming what’s expected. It’s amazing.
“Also, being a public school I have to say it’s a huge accomplishment. Cary-Grove is starting to become a name downstate and not a lot of public schools do that. I’m really proud of the girls.”
The loss ended an exciting postseason run for the Patriots, who lost to Cary-Grove for the third time this season and were beaten by the Trojans in the Elite Eight for the second straight year.
“We had an incredible season,” Crow said. “If you look at the makeup of our team, we have eight seniors and five of them are first-year varsity players. Both outsides are juniors and our right side is a sophomore also. For them to do what they were able to do this year was amazing. They were just so tough mentally, which was refreshing to see.”