Chelsea Williams' electric play leads Lake Zurich over Stevenson
The start of the North Suburban Conference girls volleyball season got underway in dramatic fashion on Wednesday night in Lake Zurich.
Visiting Stevenson and the host Bears kept the fans cheering from start to finish, registering 148 combined points.
The final one came off the right hand of senior Chelsea Williams, a Miami University at Ohio recruit.
Williams' 11th kill of the match gave the Bears an electrifying 23-25, 26-24, 26-24 triumph in front of a very supportive student body which watched its girls improve to 8-4 and 1-0 in the NSC.
Senior middle blocker Akpevwe Akpoigbe, whose block gave the Bears a 25-24 lead in the decisive set, finished with a team-high 12 kills while classmate Heidi Mason dished out a season-high 35 assists.
The Patriots (8-5, 0-1) actually owned the biggest leads of the night, surging ahead 9-5 in Set 2 and 15-11 in Set 3.
"We aren't a team to get down on ourselves," said Mason, the Bears' all-time leader in assists with more than 1,400. "Even if we are down, we come right back."
That sure was the case on Wednesday, when the defense played a major role.
Junior Madelyn Elsen led with 10 digs, followed by Mason (6), Williams (5) and Vanessa Keller (4).
"I really thought our defense stepped up," said Bears coach Rachel Wiatrowski. "Madelyn was doing a great job digging balls. And Heidi was phenomenal, really doing a great job running a very balanced offense. She hit our middles, she had Chelsea and she brought Kayden (Glisson, a junior who had 3 kills) along. We kept talking about how we needed to be balanced to work out of holes, We can't do this with one person. Everyone has to put in as much work as everyone else, and I feel they did."
Juniors Brynn Smith (12 kills) and Mija Jegers (9 kills, 7 digs) worked hard on the attack for Stevenson while taking their cues from senior setter Abby Minin (25 assists, 2 aces).
"We did a great job scrambling and winning things out of the system so I was happy with that, but our serve receive was poor and made it difficult for us to establish any true momentum," said Stevenson coach Tim Crow. "Credit Lake Zurich. They served us really tough. And we had too many tip balls going on. And I think the timing of our middles was a little off because we weren't passing well.
Top servers for Lake Zurich were Williams and Mason, who each had 2 aces while classmate Baylie Parks had one along with 2 kills.
"I'm really excited about this season," Mason said. "Chelsea and I have been on varsity for four years and we've really been waiting for this season.'"
The Bears showed that with the ability to make up deficits on Thursday.
"It was really a great win," Wiatrowski said. "We've been practicing a lot on how to stay mentally focused in games. We practice games where we are down and we have to come back up and keep building and building, so that kind of paid off for us today.
"This is a tough conference and on any given night anything can happen. Maybe it's just a matter of home court advantage or something else. But whatever, I think our conference is one of the strongest and it's up for grabs."
Other key players for the Patriots were Cayla Weisner (2 kills, 3 assist blocks), Ava Wysocki (3 kills, 4 assist blocks) and Sasha Evenko (2 kills, 4 assist blocks). Weisner's kill tied the third set at 24-24.
"Obviously, Lake Zurich is very good in our conference along with Warren and Libertyville. Mundelein is way better than what they've been. Lake Forest is always pretty solid. We only play each other once so we don't have the luxury of home and away from a conference standpoint."