Naperville Central moves past East Aurora

With a tough rematch with Metea Valley within their sights, the Naperville Central Redhawks knew they had to first take care of business in Monday's girls volleyball playoff opener with East Aurora.

With strong serving and a balanced attack, the 12th-seeded Redhawks had little trouble taking care of business in a 25-8, 25-3 defeat of No. 22 East Aurora at the Class 4A Metea Valley regional. Naperville Central improved to 19-17 on the year and now gets a shot at the sixth-seeded Mustangs, who defeated the Redhawks in a three-setter in the regular season.

"I think coming into the state playoffs we really want to try and go far," said Redhawks junior Sarah Schank, who had 6 kills in the match. "Last year we got cut a little short, but I think coming in here we have a really strong mindset, to do what we have to do and try our very best. We have to do everything we can to make it past these games."

Naperville Central stormed out to a 15-4 lead in the opening set with setter Janelle Skinner spreading the ball around and getting the whole team involved. Molly Stock recorded the first kill of the night and wound up sharing the team lead of 6 kills with fellow outside hitter Schank. Opposite hitter Johanna Havenaar added 4 kills on Monday and Hannah O'Connor recorded 3 winners from the middle.

"In practice we've been working on our free ball plays and our passes trying to get the middles involved, the right sides, the backrows, everybody," Schank said. "Just so we can keep the other team on their toes."

Aggressive serving by Naperville Central also kept the two-win Tomcats on their toes. Schank added 3 aces and junior Emily Kinney put her team in command of the second set right off the bat, rifling off an ace that started an 11-0 run to open the second set.

Kinney picked up 4 aces during the run and Havenaar had a pair of kills as the Redhawks took a giant step toward completing the sweep.

"I think we could have cleaned our serves up definitely because we had a lot of missed serves," said Schank, noting that the Redhawks did give East Aurora five of its eight points in the first set via missed serves. "But overall I think we're getting to where we want to be from our goal in the middle of the season. I think it's coming together pretty nicely toward the end.

"In practice we have been working on really aggressive serves even if that causes us to miss some. I think that has helped us these last couple of games we've played to get some aces."

In the night's first match, Batavia (19-17) knocked off Plainfield East 25-12, 25-17 to earn a shot at St. Francis in the first of two matches Tuesday at Metea Valley.