Girls volleyball: Glenbrook South outlasts Maine West

Consistency of play is what all coaches strive for with their teams.

Nora Feyerer of Maine West and Kelly Dorn of Glenbrook South wanted more of that from their respective young girls volleyball teams Tuesday in Glenview.

Glenbrook South showed just a little more at the end of each game as the Titans defeated Maine West 25-21, 25-23 in a Central Suburban crossover match.

"We need our serve receive to get our setters around the net," Feyerer said. "We need to be hitting smarter shots rather than just hitting hard."

Maine West returns only three players from last year and was in its first match of the season.

"We graduated a lot of seniors from last season," Federer said. "We were a little bit nervous coming in as young team. But we held our own and we are only going up from here."

Glenbrook South (2-0), which beat Buffalo Grove on Monday, took advantage of those jitters and jumped to an early 9-4 lead as both teams were scoring off unforced errors.

Maine West (0-1) rallied behind the play of Vivian Ramirez, Clare Olson, Kyra Harrington and Paige Foster to tie the game at 10-10.

The game was tied eight more times with the final time coming at 20-20. Glenbrook South was then able to pull away for the first game win thanks to the serving by Abby Kuliga and a final kill by Lamar-commit Taylor Knuth.

"(Monday) we had our first match and we ended all our nerves," said Knuth, who had 3 of her 4 kills in the first game.

"We ended real well in that match an that put us into a good start today. We weren't amazing today, but we hung on."

In the second game, Ramirez and Maine West looked like they were going to run away with it. The Warriors jumped to an 11-2 lead thanks to Ramirez, who had 4 kills during that span.

"My team made it easy for me," said Ramirez, who finished the match with 11 kills. "They were able to get me the ball and I was open."

With Knuth, Kuilga, Caitlin Riordan and Caroline Brooks leading the way, the Titans slowly chipped away at the lead. They finally caught the Warriors to tie at 20.

With the game tied at 23-23, Hallie Madsen got a huge kill and Glenbrook South forced an error to win the match.

Dorn, who returns just two starters from last season, and at times has four sophomores playing, said that her team was able to overcome some mistakes.

"We are making a lot of errors," Dorn said. "We have a young team and we play a lot of sophomores. We will steady out. This is the second day we could play. We will figure it out."

Riordan and Brooks, who are both sophomores, led Glenbrook South with 5 kills each, while Caroline Crawford, who is also a sophomore, had 4 kills.

Olson had 3 kills for Maine West.