Girls volleyball: WW South upsets St. Charles North
St. Charles North's girls volleyball team completed its first season in the DuKane Conference as champions Tuesday while Wheaton Warrenville South made sure it wasn't an undefeated title.
Zayna Meyer aced the North Stars on match point, giving the Tigers a 26-24, 11-25, 25-21 victory in a loud St. Charles North gym filled with students celebrating homecoming week.
"We've been talking a lot in our practices of having those key wins," WW South junior middle Kaileigh Ammons said. "We've had games we've been right there with them but we haven't got one of those key wins yet. So this was definitely a key win to show we can hang with these teams."
St. Charles North (28-6, 6-1) still finished alone in first place in its debut season since leaving the Upstate Eight. It proved to be a competitive race with St. Charles East, Geneva and WW South all tied for second.
The Tigers (20-8, 5-2) lost to both Geneva and St. Charles East in 3 sets.
"It's definitely a big one for us," Tigers coach Bill Schreier said. "This is the most highly ranked opponent we've beat. It's nice to get that signature win. We talk about it almost so much that the girls get sick of it."
The first set turned out to be the most competitive with 11 ties and 5 lead changes. North Stars coach Lindsey Hawkins used some different rotations as she made sure to get all her seniors playing time on senior night.
"It's a lot of fun because it's senior night and all of us got to play together," Memphis-bound senior Gigi Crescenzo said. "It's nice to play one last game with each other."
Crescenzo put a kill down for a 13-10 North Stars lead before the Tigers tied it at 15 on Annika Barron's block. The score stayed tied at 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24.
St. Charles North had a chance to win the set but served long, then the Tigers won the next two points both on North Star mistakes.
Katie Lanz sparked the North Stars to an easy win in the second set, serving 9 straight points that extended a 7-3 lead to 16-3. That stretch included five straight aces on her jump serve including two in a row even after Schreier called timeout trying to break the UNC-Wilmington recruit's momentum.
"Katie Lanz is an insane server," Ammons said. "That's when we fell apart sort of. But third game when we passed it (Lanz' serve) up, that really helped us."
It also helped to have a strong server of their own, Sarah Burau, who staked the Tigers to an 8-0 lead in the third set.
"We gave up that huge run, you can go one of two ways," Schreier said. "I'm proud of the girls to go ahead and respond and step up in that third set. Sarah Burau being able to dictate from the service line flipped the game on them. Makes them have to pursue."
The Tigers took their biggest lead at 16-9 before the North Stars rallied. They pulled within 20-17 when Grace Lilly won a 50-50 ball at the net, and they closed to 21-20 on a Tigers violation.
Meyer slammed down a kill to keep the North Stars from tying the score, and moments later the Tigers completed their breakthrough win.
"It's always going to be difficult to put down a good team," Schreier said. "They are undefeated in conference for a reason. We needed to be able to withstand their run and create something on our own. Thank goodness we were able to in the last five points. Couple big blocks, couple touches, then we were able to terminate a ball. Hats off to these guys."
Meyer (8 kills), Mackenzie Stebbins (7 kills), Sara Field (6 kills) and Ammons (6 kills) led a balanced Tigers attack.
Lanz paced the North Stars with 10 kills, Lilly and Kyla Lannert had 7 and Crescenzo 6 kills plus 14 digs. Maddie Gorniak added 9 digs.
"We just need to keep working hard, keep building up our serve-receive, keep working on our defense," Crescenzo said. "Once we do those two things well we know we can play our best.
"That's (the DuKane title) really exciting, it's one of our main goals for the season. We knew it was going to be a tough conference coming into it."