Glenbard West tops Glenbard East
The scary thing is, Glenbard West players think they have a lot of improvement in them yet.
Scary, because they looked very good already in Thursday's 25-13, 25-10 Class 4A regional final victory against Glenbard East in Glen Ellyn.
"We have a lot of room to improve," Hilltoppers senior Quiana Ware said. "We'll be at practice tomorrow trying to find more weakenesses on our team to become a stronger team altogether. We have a lot to improve on to make it far."
The Hilltoppers left no doubt they don't believe they peaked in the regional, and they don't want to stop at the Riverside-Brookfield sectional next week either.
The Hilltoppers (32-5) draw St. Ignatius in a secctional semifinal at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
"We could be really good," Ware said. "Very good."
"We believe we can still be better," added Glenbard West coach Pete Mastandrea. "We do. It's a better every day, every week, every month team."
The Hilltoppers made sure Glenbard East was out of time, jumping out to a 16-8 lead in Game 1 on junior Rachel Hoder's winner, then boosting the lead to double digits when Ware's tip kill made the score 21-11.
They were even more on top of their game in the second. The Hilltoppers scored the first eight points and never again allowed the Rams (18-19) to get closer than six.
"We told ourselves to come out energized," Ware said. "We just played no matter what. We all knew it was the seniors' last game at home. We just wanted to go out with a bang, leave nothing behind."
The seniors, including four-year varsity players Natalie Schilling and Kate Wagner, have seen the Hilltoppers go 62-1 at Biester Gym over these four years.
For the Rams, Elin Ream had 7 kills and a block. Allison Farrell added 3 kills, Casey Greene had 7 digs and Mackenzie Bell added 7 assists and an ace.
"I thought we played well at the beginning of the game," Rams coach Marci Maier said. "We were kind of going a little bit blank towards the beginning and they got on a nice run in the first set and we didn't really recover. At times there were some good rallies back and forth and we got a few kills here and there, but they're offensively extremely strong."