Girls volleyball: Cary-Grove takes 3rd in state
NORMAL - It's sugar time for the Cary-Grove girls volleyball team, and oh how sweet it is for the Trojans.
Dominant and confident from the first point to the last, Cary-Grove defeated Normal Community 25-18, 25-19 Saturday night at Redbird Arena to take third place in the Class 4A state tournament.
The trophy is the Trojans' fourth in as many trips to state, following the 2009 state title team and the 2010 and 2011 teams that took second place.
And now the Trojans, on a season-long no sugar diet, can eat all the sweets they want.
"When you think about teams that practice hard and always put the team ahead of themselves, this team did that," said Cary-Grove coach Patty Langanis, who will enter next season with 598 career wins.
"This group of seven seniors deserve this. It took a lot of guts to come back after (Friday) night and play as hard as they did tonight and I'm proud of them. It's going to be hard to say goodbye to these seniors."
Cary-Grove's balanced attack was led by senior Ally Vasquez (8 kills), senior Alli Splitt (6 kills), senior Sarah Graham (4 kills, 7 digs) and senior Erin Olson (4 kills, 22 assists, 7 digs). Defensively, senior libero Delaney Bayer had a monster match with 11 digs, constantly stopping pounding kill attempts by Normal's powerful hitters.
"Delaney was our libero sophomore year and got beat out junior year," said Langanis. "She took a year off club ball and had some back issues. I was concerned about how she might be but I think she may be one of the best liberos Cary-Grove has ever had. She's solid, she's tough and I respect her so much as a person."
Cary-Grove (36-6) trailed 9-7 in the first set before a kill from sophomore Maddy Katchen made it 9-8 and put Bayer at the service line. Before Normal (30-11) knew what hit it, the Trojans led 14-9 and never looked back, eventually stretching the lead to 21-11 and winning the set on a monstrous kill from Graham off a perfect set from Olson.
"We knew we wanted to be aggressive with our serving and Normal was killing us offensively until we got our block set," Langanis said.
In the second set, the Trojans broke a 4-4 tie with a quick 3-0 run that included a Vasquez kill and two Normal errors. Normal did close to within 11-10 but Langanis called timeout and a kill from senior Rachel Rosch made it 12-10 Trojans. The Ironmen were able to come within one at 14-13 but a hitting error and a Vasquez kill made it 16-13 and Normal never got closer than two the rest of the way.
The Trojans closed out the match on a Graham kill.
"Normal is very talented and big in the front court and we knew we had to stay on top," Langanis said. "At times I felt it starting to slip but our seniors really stepped up and got some big kills and aces."
Normal coach Christine Konopasek credited Cary-Grove's net play, and Olson's precision setting.
"No. 15 (Splitt) played phenomenal," Konopasek said. "I don't know that we stopped her once. And they have a really dynamic setter who runs their offense really well."
Which is something Olson, for now anyway, wouldn't mind doing again.
"This is fantastic," said the Bradley recruit, who added she had three chocolate bars filled with caramel waiting for her at the hotel. "I'm still in denial. I'm pretending I'm coming back next season. I've loved every bit of it - from freshman year when I was on sophomores to senior year coming downstate."
And Langanis' message to her team about eating all that chocolate they haven't touched all season.
"You're going to get so fat," she smiled.