Girls volleyball: Jacobs comes back to beat Dundee-Crown
The Jacobs girls volleyball team withstood a late-game surge by Dundee-Crown to win the second set in the teams' Fox Valley Conference match Tuesday.
The Golden Eagles then staged their own comeback to win the third set and the match.
The 22-25, 26-24, 25-22 victory in Carpentersville earned Jacobs it first conference win of the season.
In the third set, the Chargers, who had been struggling all night to get into rhythm, finally found their stride and had a mid-set lead of 17-14. The squad then committed 4 hitting errors in a row that tied the game at 17 all. Jacobs took its first lead of the set, 18-17 on a Kelly Ross spike (7 kills).
The Golden Eagles (2-11, 1-7) took the lead for good, 19-18, on an Autumn Miller kill. The junior outside hitter won the set and the match with her eighth kill of the night.
"It felt really good," said Miller about the shot. "It was like a weight was lifted off our shoulders."
"It wasn't a perfect pass, set, hit game. You had to win all those unnatural plays," said Jacobs coach Lisa Dwyer. "We worked a lot on that in practice. Tonight we put our serve receive together and we really had to work hard on our shots - ones that would force their defense to work. We were serving tough and winning all those momentum plays."
"Unfortunately, we couldn't quite get into our grove tonight. We weren't quite as aggressive as we needed to be especially on the blocks and with some of our attacks," said D-C coach Christine Hopkins-Muehl. "We squandered a lead and couldn't quite turn it around."
The second set featured three ties and two lead changes in the early going. After the third tie at 9-9, the Golden Eagles started to pull ahead and had a 5-point cushion at 22-17. D-C (6-7, 3-5) rallied and tied it at 22-all on a block by Jenna Thelen and Paige Gieseke (6 kills).
On the next serve, it appeared that D-C scored on a Gieseke spike but the referees ruled the ball went out of bounds and awarded the point to Jacobs, putting the Eagles ahead 23-22. The Golden Eagles were then at set point, 24-22, on one of Danielle Cassidy's 5 aces. Cassidy also notched 25 assists and 10 digs. The Chargers tied it again at 24-24 on an Ayana Gard strike (11 kills, 7 digs) and a Jacobs hitting error.
The Golden Eagles capitalized on back-to-back D-C errors to win the game.
In the first set, D-C led until a Miller kill tied the game at 13 all. The Chargers regained the lead on a Jacobs hitting error. The Golden Eagles pulled within 1, 23-22, on a block.
A Gard kill and a Jacobs hitting error sealed the set.
Rachel Holstein tallied 8 kills for Jacobs while teammate Christy Swierczynski had 7.
D-C's Alexandra Buckley was credited with 22 assists and 12 digs.