Bartlett ends Batavia's season

Carly Sahagian certainly made some noise for the Bartlett girls volleyball team on Thursday.

The junior not only tallied a match-high 14 kills but added 5 aces, 7 digs and 2 blocks in Bartlett's 25-19, 25-19 win over No. 7 seed Batavia in the Class 4A regional semifinal at Geneva.

"She played really well," Bartlett coach Brandon Mueller said. "She had a lot of big kills for us... I don't think a lot of people have a Carly on their team."

With the win, the No. 10 seeded Hawks (21-11) will play the No. 2 seed Vikings Saturday at 1 p.m. for the regional title.

In the first game, Bartlett took the lead for good after three early ties. Batavia, however, kept it close at the end after it scored 6 of 7 points and reduced the Hawks' lead to 20-19 before they called a timeout.

After the timeout, Bartlett scored the next 5 points behind Batavia errors, a Lauren Hartford block, an ace from Jackie Gulczynski, Alyssa Cazzato's tip kill and a game-ending kill from Emily Hayes.

The only two times Batavia led the entire match was when it scored two of the first three points of Game 2. Four ties later, Bartlett began to build its lead after scoring 6 consecutive points. It got up to 23-10 after a Sahagian kill, but Batavia scored 9 of the next 10 points. The Hawks finally put the match away on another Sahagian kill.

"They did what they needed to do to beat us," Batavia coach Lori Trippi-Payne said. "Give them a lot of credit. We didn't execute our game plan."

In addition to Sahagian, Bartlett was led by Hartford (3 kills, 3 blocks) and Hayes (6 kills, 8 digs).

Batavia capped the season 22-14. Laura Doolin finished with 5 kills, along with Taylor Koncelik's 3 kills and 10 digs. Kelly Coleman had 6 digs and Mary Nilles finished with 3 kills.

"It's a shame because our team has played well all year," Trippi-Payne said. "It is very rare that we have had a match where we didn't play well. I'm really disappointed it had to end this way."