Neuqua Valley bounces back more quickly
Tuesday's boys volleyball match featured a pair of teams hit hard by graduation after last season.
Fortunately for host Neuqua Valley, it has come together a little quicker than West Chicago, as evidenced by a 25-13, 25-21 Upstate Eight Conference victory that improved the team to 7-10 overall and 2-0 in conference. Neuqua Valley outside hitter Austin Neace, a reserve last spring, led the way with a match-high 10 kills.
Neace's first kill of the night broke a 3-3 tie in the opener and started Neuqua Valley on a 9-2 run for a 12-5 lead. West Chicago (6-13) would not get within five points the rest of Game 1 as Neace and Brian McKissick were just too tough to handle. McKissick had 3 kills and 3 blocks in the opener and did not even play in Game 2 as coach Roderich Mendoza went deep to his bench for most of the nightcap.
"A match like this helps with our confidence and it also gets us ready for tomorrow against Lincoln-Way East, which is a great team," Neace said. "Our team is getting a lot more close knit and we're getting to be better friends. A lot of us haven't played together because we play with different clubs."
West Chicago coach Kris Hasty is still trying to get her team to play with more consistency this season. Against Neuqua Valley's new lineup in Game 2, the visitors jumped ahead 7-0 following kills from Justin Thiede and Elijah Pinkevich, but they couldn't hold on as Neuqua Valley rallied to draw even at 9-9 and then went on to take the game to complete the sweep.
When asked how her team matched up with Neuqua Valley, Hasty replied: "Well we didn't. That's been kind of our whole year. We didn't have many returners back so we're still trying to figure out who we are. We have a lot of inexperience out there and we're not real deep on the bench."
Pinkevich and Brian Benes each had 6 kills to pace West Chicago, while junior setter Michael Quiroz had 15 assists. But with the score tied at 16-16 in the second game, Neuqua Valley's Alex Nehrkorn unleashed an ace and his team never trailed again. Aaron Lauth had 9 assists in the opener for Neuqua Valley, before handing the setting duties over to Jack Dentzman, who had 10 assists in the nightcap.
"It was nice to have a match like that only because there have ben a number of matches where we wanted to get guys in the second game, but we didn't play the way we would have expected," Mendoza said. "The main thing that we're still wrestling with is our ball control. Our serve receive and our defense are still not where I'd like it to be, especially at this point in the season. Our practices aren't very exciting because we do so much serve receive."
Neuqua Valley's deep bench will get tested this weekend when the team plays at the Benet tourney minus a number of seniors who will be attending prom.