Girls volleyball: Holsen's record-setting day sparks Stevenson to NSC tourney title
It was a great end to the 2021 spring season for the Stevenson girls volleyball team and junior outside hitter Amanda Holsen Saturday at Libertyville.
With Holsen recording a school-record 30 kills, the Patriots won the North Suburban Conference tournament championship over the host Wildcats by a final score of 25-20, 19-25, 25-19.
Stevenson closed out the abbreviated season with an 11-4 record while Libertyville takes an 18-5 record into the final week of its season, starting Monday against Barrington.
After beating Libertyville for the title, the Patriots defeated Lake Forest 21-25, 25-23, 29-27 as Serena Mehta's service point closed out the match. Stevenson closed out its perfect 3-0 day with a 25-22, 25-22 victory over Warren (12-8).
Libertyville went 2-1 on the day with a 25-16, 25-19 win over the Blue Devils in round two before an easy 25-10, 25-15 triumph over the Scouts to close out the tourney. Warren toppled Lake Forest 25-21, 21-19.
Besides Holsen's record-setting 30 kills, the Pats got 31 assists from senior Brooke Micek against the Wildcats along with 16 digs from Emerson Kouri, and 14 digs from Mehta.
"I was definitely surprised, I wasn't really, you know, paying attention to the numbers or anything, but I felt our team played some really clean ball and our serve receive defense was pretty solid," said Holsen, who broke the previous school record of 29 kills set by Jori Radtke in 2016.
"I think we did a pretty good job cleaning up our errors that we had against (Libertyville) the first time we lost, and we did a lot better job of shifting over down the line."
Stevenson coach Tim Crow was very happy with the strong end to the campaign.
" (Holsen) only had three hitting errors in her 54 attempts, we served aggressively against Libertyville, and it paid pretty good dividends for us," said Crow. "It's (Micek's) first season on the varsity team and she had a really good season."
Libertyville's Keira Kasten and Ella Schaffnit had 8 kills each against the Pats while teammates Jamie Marquardt and Larisa Slesers had 13 and 12 assists respectively. Olivia Sauers had 21 digs followed by Schaffnit with 14 digs Grace Comilla with 12 digs, and Kellie Hopper with 10 digs in the title match.
"We've got kids taking the ACT today so we're adjusting on the fly like everyone else," said Libertyville coach Greg Loika. "We made some mistakes early and Stevenson took advantage of them."
Lauren Shaw led Warren with 8 kills against Lake Forest while teammate Lindsay Goldman had 4 kills. GabriElle Brewer had 8 assists against the Scouts while teammate Maddie Wojdyla had 7 assists.
"We finished our season within our conference in fourth place so today we moved up one place," said Warren coach Yun Chen. "We lost to Lake Forest on their Senior Night, but today we came out loose and we were ready."