Girls volleyball: South outlasts West in three
After the first two sets were decided by 2 points, it looked like the third was on the same pattern when Maine South visited Maine West in a Central Suburban League girls volleyball crossover on Wednesday night.
The final set started out tied four times before an ace by Hawks senior Vicky Stipetic broke a 9-9 tie.
South built the lead to 12-9 and never trailed again en route to a hard-fought 26-24, 23-25, 25-18 triumph in Des Plaines.
The two schools from Maine Township High School District 207 finished the night with identical 5-4 records
"Every time we play Maine West it always goes three and there are 2-point differentials in the sets," said Hawks coach Kathleen Durkin, who played at Nazareth Academy and Loyola University in Chicago. "Maine West is always a great opponent for us. These are typical scores with them. I love coming here to play them."
Durkin also loved the play of Warriors senior setter Ally Block, who collected 17 assists, 5 kills and 10 digs.
"That No. 2 (Block) is awesome," she said. "She is so quick. And after the match I told No. 13 (Reilly Olson) she has a great swing."
Olson used that powerful swing for a match-high 11 kills.
"Every year it's always close with Maine South," said Olson a, three-year varsity player. "We just let it get away a little at the end.
"We learned a lot from this match, which will help us when we start conference next week."
Warriors coach Mike Cott said his team learned it has to be more consistent with serve and serve receive.
"It really comes down to consistency for us in those areas," Cott said. "We missed too many serves and we were really out of our system by not passing the ball to where it needs to be. That led to problems. We did OK with that in Game 2, which is the one we ended up winning."
In Game 2, the Warriors rallied from 5-1 and 8-3 deficits. They pulled into their first tie at 18-18 on an ace from freshman Claire Olson (3 aces for the match) before a kill by her sister Reilly tied it again at 20-20. Senior Yesenia Santiago followed with a big kill to give West a 22-21 lead.
The set was tied at 23-23 on another by Reilly Olson. Senior Sam Parcell's block made it 24-23 and an ace by Ally Block gave West the set.
Ally's sister Krysta, a sophomore, recorded 7 kills and 3 aces while senior Kaylin Johnson paced the back row with 17 digs.
"We have an interesting group right now with a lot of seniors and a lot of very inexperienced players," Cott said. "So we're trying to mesh that together. This match was an outstanding experience for Krysta, Claire and Bailey Cassidy (sophomore) who were able to get in there and they'll earn from this.
"We made some mistakes. We missed too many serves, we had digging errors on balls I thought we should have been able to keep in play and we had some poor shot choices at times. But these are things I think we will get better at with experience."
Cott liked the effort from his captains (Ally Block, Reilly Olson and Johnson).
"I thought our captains did a real nice job leading us on the floor," he added. "For that matter, all our seniors played well."
Junior basketball standout Angela Dugalic was not on the floor as she recovers from a basketball injury.
"We expect her back around conference time," Cott said. "Once she gets acclimated, that will give us more of a blocking presence. Ellie Centella (senior) has done a nice job on the right side. So Angela will give us some more options once we see where we're at with Yesenia (Santiago, who left the match with an ankle injury in third set)."
Sophomore Ana Birkett led the Hawks with 8 kills while senior Abbey Kwiatkowski added 4.
South senior libero Madisen Werdell paced the back row with 22 digs while senior setter Katie Carmichael handed out 22 assists.
"Our sophomore (Birkett) finally started putting the ball down," Durkin said. "And I can't say enough about Katie. She just keeps the team in tact."