St. Francis falters in semifinal
NORMAL — St. Francis spent four years trying to get back to the state volleyball tournament.
Not many expected this to be the team to end that “drought,” but it did.
This wasn't the return the Spartans had in mind.
Defending champion Breese Mater Dei, making its fourth straight trip to Redbird Arena, denied St. Francis an opportunity to win its ninth state championship with a 25-19, 25-11 win in Friday's Class 3A semifinal.
“We just picked a bad day,” said St. Francis senior Carly Warner, “to play bad.”
St. Francis (34-7) drops into today's third-place match against Marian Catholic, a team it beat at the Rich East Invitational. Mater Dei (38-3) will go for its seventh state title against Marian Central, which St. Francis beat twice during the season.
None of St. Francis' kids have played at state before, but Spartans coach Peg Kopec refused to lean on that crutch. Kopec and St. Francis were making their 16th appearance at state, first since 2007.
“I guess I'm disappointed because a lot of people didn't believe in this team this year,” Kopec said, “and I think we've come quite a long way and become a little bit of a force to be reckoned with. I don't think you saw that team today.”
St. Francis and Mater Dei have split four semifinal matches. First-year Mater Dei coach Chad Rakers, the son of legendary Knights coach Fred Rakers, never expected the 36-minute exhibition his team put on.
“I'll start with one word — wow,” Rakers said. “From point one we said we were going to bring it all night, and they did.”
The one-sided final score doesn't show it, but St. Francis started strong in a back-and-forth early going.
The Spartans held leads of 7-4 after a Warner kill and 10-6 following a kill by Daiva Wise. A St. Francis service error was followed by a pair of hitting errors, and the pendulum of momentum swung quickly the opposite way.
A kill by Mater Dei's Kayla Eversgerd gave the Knights the lead for good at 15-14.
St. Francis was hurt by 13 hitting errors, three Spartans hitting at a negative percentage.
“We had the lead at first, and we were really excited about that,” Warner said, “but they're a great team. We knew they were going to keep fighting. We just weren't ready for that.”
Mater Dei rolled out to leads of 6-1, 15-3 and 19-5 in the second set. Four-year starter Brooke Schulte, who had 6 kills for the match, unleashed a pair of jump-serve aces to make it 15-3.
“The atmosphere, when you first step in the gym here, it gets your nerves up,” Schulte said, “but we have a lot of girls that have been here. It does help. We're used to this. Everybody has jitters at the beginning of the match, but they go away once that first kill goes down.”
On the other hand it appeared that the setting and urgency of the match caught up to St. Francis in the second set.
“We have seen an atmosphere like this before playing club, but it's not the same as being downstate,” Wise said. “I feel like some people were hesitating, they didn't want to mess up, they didn't want to embarrass themselves. When we got down things just got shaky. We know we can play better.”
Wise, who had 5 kills, will play collegiately next year at Toledo. She doesn't want her high school experience to end like this.
“I know some of these girls aren't going to play in college, so tomorrow is going to be their last match,” Wise said. “We need to give everything we have because I do not want to leave this court on a loss.”
Warner added 4 kills and 10 assists and Grace Churney 4 kills. Churney is eager to show folks the St. Francis volleyball they missed Friday.
“Tomorrow we need to come out tough,” Churney said, “and we need to come out and make a statement that we belong here, that we earned this spot.”