Cary-Grove shoves aside South Elgin in Huntley sectional

This was one of those matches where everyone in the gym knew an upset would require a miracle.

Powerful Cary-Grove, the No. 3 ranked girls volleyball team in the final regular-season Daily Herald Top 20, rolled over South Elgin 25-15, 25-14 in the first semifinal of the Class 4A Huntley sectional Tuesday night, taking care of business a point at a time.

"We just try to play up to our potential and not down to the competition," said Trojans' senior setter Abbey Heredia. "We learned last year that anything can happen and you just have to stay focused."

While the outcome of each game was never really in question, Cary-Grove coach Patty Langanis did think her team lost its focus at times.

"It's not an easy thing to do," Langanis said of staying focused with a big lead. "South Elgin put up a battle at the end of both games and we lost our focus a little. That's definitely something we'll talk about at practice."

The Trojans (34-4) will meet host Huntley (29-9) at 7 p.m. Thursday for the sectional championship and a berth in Saturday's St. Charles East supersectional against either the host and defending state champion Saints or York. The Trojans will be seeking their first sectional title since 2001 and second in program history. Huntley has won seven sectional titles, the last also coming in 2001.

South Elgin (15-19), playing in a sectional for the first time, stayed with the Trojans early on in Game 1 and trailed just 10-5 after a Cary-Grove hitting error. But then powerful junior Kelly Lamberti put down a kill and senior Kayla Klinger served 2 aces to make it a 13-5 game. Another hitting error on the Trojans made it 13-6 but another Lamberti kill, a South Elgin error and successive kills from Lamberti and senior Colleen Hargrove made it a 17-6 game. Even though the Storm had runs of 4 and 5 straight points after that, the deficit was too much to overcome. A Heredia kill gave Cary-Grove Game 1.

The Trojans, whose superb jump-serving ability forced South Elgin into 11 serve receive errors in the match, then rode that momentum to a 6-0 lead to start Game 2 and South Elgin never seriously threatened, although the Storm did score 5 of the game's final 7 points to make the score respectable. Hargrove's kill off a perfect Heredia set ended the match.

"It was a lackluster win," said Heredia. "It was a slow match but we kept our composure. Our offense was off in some spots but we kept it together."

Lamberti and Hargrove each had 7 kills to lead Cary-Grove, while Sam Mainzer added 7 digs, Klinger had 5 aces and Heredia dished out 18 assists.

Senior Alyssa Krause led South Elgin with 4 kills and sophomore Becca Smith had 2. Katelyn Stonecipher had 6 digs and senior Sarah Havemann 4 digs for the Storm.

"Our goal was to score 15 points in a game on them and we did that," said Krause, a 4-year varsity player for the Storm. "We've just improved so much this year. It's sad but this is my favorite team in my four years here. We gave it our all. We came in relaxed and we wanted to have fun. That's all you can ask for."

Storm coach Joni Melahn lauded her team's effort as well.

"We said we wanted to go out swinging and that's what we did," said Melahn, whose team finished the season on a 12-5 run after starting 3-14. "(Cary-Grove) has a wide variety of servers. They've got really tough servers - every one of them.

"I'm sad it's over. I really got along well with this team and this team got along well with each other. It's been fun."