Naperville North recalls how to get comeback win

Jennifer Urban didn't need to dig deep in the memory bank to find hope that her Naperville North Huskies could rally at Wheaton North.

"Wheaton Classic over the weekend, we were down 17-9 in the third game against Evanston and won," Urban said. "That came to mind tonight."

The Huskies did it again Thursday, coming back to win 23-25, 25-22, 25-21 in Wheaton. Naperville North (10-7, 5-1 DuPage Valley Conference), down a game, trailed 12-3 in the second.

Kelsey Ullrich had a match-high 18 kills with 10 digs for Wheaton North (8-9, 2-4), an Ullrich kill and ace boosting the Falcons' Game 2 lead to 22-19. Wheaton North committed a service error out of a Naperville North timeout, and a pair of Corinne Gajcak kills knotted the score at 22-22. The Huskies scored the last 6 points of Game 2.

"Our goal was to side out and score a few points every time we served," Urban said. "That chips away at a lead pretty quickly."

Falcons coach Carole Kristensen also pointed to recent history in reflecting on the turn of events Thursday. Unfortunately, history repeated itself.

"Same thing happened to us against West Aurora a week ago," Kristensen said. "We were making our own errors. We'd get the pass and we wouldn't be able to execute a play or we wouldn't get a pass and then they'd have a broken play. I thought we had it corrected and obviously we didn't. We had a little doubt in our teammates tonight. It won't happen again."

Wheaton North led 19-16 in the third game but 4 Falcons errors sandwiched around a Madison Murphy kill for Naperville North pushed the Huskies ahead 21-19.

"I was really happy that we started to make adjustments midway through that second game," Urban said. "Their outsides were swinging really well, but we started to get some touches and we were starting to dig them a little bit. Whenever we can make adjustments out of timeouts it's going to put us in a better position."

Gajcak and Ashley Crawford each had 8 kills and Murphy 7 for Naperville North, which remained a game behind DVC leader West Chicago heading into a showdown on Tuesday in West Chicago.

"We did a great job of blocking," junior middle Murphy said. "I think that's what really saved us tonight."

Katie Thornton had 32 assists and 4 aces for Wheaton North, 3 of those aces coming in succession that gave the Falcons a 5-0 lead in Game 2. Laura Drabant added 5 kills and 14 digs. Wheaton North had its three-match winning streak snapped, having gone 3-2 at the Wheaton Classic before beating Naperville Central in two games.

"They played really well over the weekend and phenomenal Tuesday and started out strong," Kristensen said. "We just started making mental errors and didn't execute."