Girls volleyball: Confident Metea Valley wins fifth straight Willowbrook title
It can be hard to gauge just how important confidence is, but Metea Valley's girls volleyball program always seems to have plenty when playing at the Willowbrook tournament.
On Saturday it sure seemed to be a factor.
Both Addison Trail and the eventual champion Mustangs played well over the weekend to advance to title match, But down the stretch of the back-and-forth third set, Metea Valley (9-3) seemed to aided by a confidence that comes with repeated success. In the end the Mustangs made just enough plays to outlast the Blazers 21-25, 25-20, 28-26 to claim the championship plaque at Willowbrook for a fifth straight year.
"Man, it was just a dogfight. I love it," Mustangs coach Dave Macdonald said after Keira Jannisch's winner ended the marathon match, which featured great defense and many long rallies. "This shows us we can play against good defensive teams … we're good defensively, too and I'm just happy this ended up in our favor."
Addison Trail, which rallied from 15-8 down to take the first game with a 17-6 run, had its chances in the decisive set, which was tied at 14-14 and then was even nine more times late. Metea Valley finally prevailed, in part due to a missed serve, a net violation and an attack error that followed a kill by the Blazers Ally Severino that had tied the game at 25.
"Confidence coming to this tournament (was on our side)," Macdonald said. "We've won five in a row, so our confidence kind of showed a little late … but Addison Trail did a great job, their right side was putting up some big blocks and their defense was great.
Addison Trail's Mia Johnson, a 5-foot-10 junior, has switched positions to the middle this fall. She had 6 kills and 6 blocks on the match and was integral in her team's comeback win in the opener. Senior outside Jess D'Ambrose did her part for the Blazers with 10 kills, 9 digs and 3 aces, but Metea Valley was the sharper team at the very end.
"There were some really great defensive plays on both sides of the net," Blazers coach Dan Styler said after his team fell to 8-5. "It was a real fun game to watch as a fan of the game."
That said, he's hopeful his team learns from some of its mistakes.
"If you track how those plays ended, the last few points for Metea were a missed serve, net violation, two hitting errors where we tried hitting an off-speed shot where it didn't even go over the net," Styler said. "So we felt like the errors at the end were all controllable things on our side of the net.
"We've got to learn from those errors, especially in pressure situations like that so that's something we've got to take away from this tournament."
A young Metea squad took some lumps in 2018, but the players' growth is leading a resurgence. Sophomore setter/opposite Regan Holmer had 32 assists in the tourney final to go with 17 digs.
She got big pay from her outsides Cora Ondrus and Gabby Zawadski, who combined for 18 kills, along with solid play from Emily Day and Jannisch in the middle. Then there was the defense, which was led by Morgan Rank's 30 digs and 10 more from Megan DeAngelo, not to forget Holmer's all-around effort.
"After last year I think we're all a little fired up," Holmer said. "I think we have a pretty good future for this team and a lot of potential. We showed glimpses of that potential here today, and it was a fun battle."