Girls volleyball: Elgin comes from behind, beats Larkin

It's Homecoming week at Larkin, and at least one Royals alumnus came back to celebrate.

Elgin's volleyball team, coached by Larkin grad Scott Stewart, downed the host Royals, 25-23, 25-17.

The Maroons took control with a 10-0 run late in the second set. After a missed serve gave Elgin a sideout, the Maroons ran off 9 more points with Kennedy Venable at the service line. The run featured a couple of aces and kills by Corinna Zapata and Stephanie Zapf.

Elgin led 22-15 at the end of the run and the Maroons took advantage of 3 Larkin hitting errors to close out the match.

Zapata had 3 of the Maroons' 8 kills for the match.

"It was not the way we normally have been playing, so it was nice to see that we could still get a win out of It," Steward said. "We're going to want to finish these last 2 games strong. We weren't as aggressive as I would have liked to see us."

Elgin got back to .500 at 14-14 after beating the Royals for the third time this season.

"There were a couple of years when they were walloping me pretty good, so it's nice to be on the other side of it for awhile," said Stewart.

Larkin (1-29) led in both sets, but couldn't close it out.

"We've given up runs a lot this season," said Larkin coach Henry Graack. "That's our biggest issue is when the other team gains momentum, we're not very good at getting ourselves out of it. And a lot of it is making a lot of mental mistakes, which I thought we did. We let them off the hook quite a bit. When we had runs, we'd make a mental mistake or two and it starts to pile up. They'd start to play better, and then we can't get ourselves out of it."

Alexia Saldivar's 7 kills led Larkin while Olivia Warren added 4.

The first set was tied at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. The Maroons went ahead with a 9-1 run, but the Royals responded with an 8-0 run of their own to go up 19-17.

Larkin led 22-19 when a tip by Emily Graves gave the Maroons a sideout. Elgin added 3 more points with Inga Suceska at the line and, after a trade of missed serves, an ace by Kielrra Turpin finished it off.

Larkin led most of the way in set 2 before Elgin's big run turned it around.