Girls volleyball: Aurora Christian takes Lisle Invitational

For a young Wheaton Academy volleyball team, Saturday's Lisle Invitational provided a lot of nice things, if not a championship or even a winning record.

The Warriors brought their 2-9 record into the six-team event looking mostly just for continued growth for an inexperienced squad. Wheaton Academy capped off its long day by rallying to beat Evergreen Park 25-22, 25-16 to finish the day 2-3.

Elmwood Park jumped ahead 14-5 in the first set before the Warriors stormed back to take the opener with a 20-8 run. With sophomore middle hitter Brittney Wells and sophomore outside hitter Alyssa Mantia leading the way, the team took the second set with a little less stress and ended the tourney on a high note.

"It definitely does make you feel better (to end with a win)," said Mantia, who recorded 5 kills and 3 aces against Evergreen Park. "I think we've grown just in working as a team. We weren't really working as a team at first. It was more like one person was doing their job and the next one was doing theirs, but we weren't really working as a team."

Mantia said this improved teamwork helped the Warriors erase the big deficit in the first set.

"I feel like we all just encouraged each other and we started communicating more," she said. "So I think that was key and also just like boosting each other up."

Wheaton Academy got a boost from Wells, who at 6-foot-1 is one of the few players on the team with much height to work with. She had a team-leading 7 kills against the Mustangs, while Kayla Tyrell had 4 kills and a lengthy service run during the first-set comeback.

"As a team we're really just kind of owning who we are and just what kind of ball we're going to have to play," Wheaton Academy coach D.A. Nichols said. "We're going to have to play super-tough defense and take some chances, and we know we're going to go out and serve tough. But we're doing things the right way."

The Warriors' other win Saturday was a 26-24, 25-19 defeat of the host Lions, with setbacks coming to tourney champion Aurora Christian as well as to Rolling Meadows and McHenry.

Unbeaten Aurora Christian, which starts three freshmen and has no seniors, went 5-0 at Lisle and is 9-0 on the season.

For Lisle, it was a long day for a team that had opened the season 7-1. The Lions, missing a couple players due to ACT, went 1-4 with a 25-21, 25-12 defeat of Evergreen Park.

"Hey, the target's off our back now," Lisle coach Bonnie Pettigrew joked after her team's struggles. "It's hard … we had a couple kids missing, but even so it's frustrating. If we had showed up we might have lost a couple matches but it would have been a lot closer."

The Lions closed the tourney with a 25-16, 25-13 loss to Rolling Meadows, which improved to 10-5 on the year after going 4-1 to place second at Lisle.