Girls volleyball: St. Viator rallies past Libertyville

The St. Viator girls volleyball team got off to a slow start Monday night against visiting Libertyville.

The Lions dropped the first set and were trailing again early in set 2 thanks to some stellar performances by the Wildcats.

Enter Kate Nottoli and Danielle Panzeca.

Nottoli, a Viator senior outside, hit 3 consecutive kills early on in the second set to give the Lions their first lead and the momentum.

Panzeca followed that up with strong play from the service line in leading Viator back to tie the match at one set apiece.

The Lions then stormed to a huge lead in the deciding set, and held off a Wildcats rally to win the nonconference match 19-25, 25-20, 27-25 at Cahill Gymnasium.

"That was a lot of fun," said Viator coach Charlie Curtin of the roller coaster ride his team went on in set 3.

"It's a game we really needed to get ourselves over the hump. We've been in a lot of close matches this year recently and coming out on the wrong end of them. Tonight we were able to play wire-to-wire after struggling a little bit in the first set."

Carrie Leazer led a strong defensive effort for the Lions with 18 digs, while senior Jenn Formica was impressive for Libertyville on defense with 11 digs.

"Viator cleaned some things up starting in set two tonight," said Wildcats coach Greg Loika," and we didn't have an answer for that."

Libertyville used a quartet of 4-point runs in the first set to win handily and closed out the set when Peyton O'Brien swatted a kill over the net that was mishandled by the Lions.

Viator responded in set 2 as Nottoli's 3 consecutive kills gave the Lions their first lead of the match at 6-4, then Panzeca served 6 straight points to pace her team to knotting up the match at one apiece.

"We've been working a lot on our serving and being aggressive," said Nottoli. "I feel like a lot of players on our team were serving really strong for us and that put Libertvyille out of system, which really gave us a boost up."

Viator raced to a 12-4 lead in the third set, but Libertyville rallied, helped along by 3 straight aces from Kellie Hopper.

The Wildcats steadily gained on the home team and actually went to match point at 24-23 on a block kill shared by Maddie Spaulding and Amanda Reinhart.

"The latter part of set three was our best volleyball for sure," said Loika. "It would have been easy (for our kids) to roll over being down by 8 points but they battled back and put us in a position to win the match."

Down by 1, Viator tied the game at 24-all on a kill from Nottoli. Then with the score tied at 25, first Leazer got a well-placed tip to bring the Lions to match point. Then it was Leazer again with the match-winning kill off a Wildcats block attempt.

"When they came back," said Nottoli, "I wanted to remind our team that if we'd just take a deep breath and focus on the here and now - and not worry about the errors we'd made - that could stay clean and get the next point.

"It was so exciting (when the final ball went down). Last year we beat Libertyville in a great match and it was nice to get a win against them here on our home court."

Hopper finished with 5 aces for the Wildcats along with a team-high 7 kills, O'Brien had 15 assists, while teammate Alyssa Sorensen added 10 digs.

Leazer led the Lions on attack with 13 kills while Nottoli finished with 11 kills.

"We talked about leaving it all on the floor," added Curtin of the Lions' late-game heroics. "We wanted to defend our home court."