Girls volleyball: Undefeated Barrington sweeps Conant
The top-ranked girls volleyball team in the Daily Herald area really showed their strength Tuesday night when Barrington visited Conant in a Mid-Suburban League match.
The undefeated Fillies (15-0, 3-0) lived up to their billing as they started off strong with a dominant 25-11 victory in the first set and they never looked back.
Conant (9-9, 0-3) did put up a better performance in the second set, but the Cougars could not overcome the persistent pressure and consistent play as Barrington posted a 25-13 victory to easily win the MSL West Division match.
Trailing 4-3 in the first set, the serving of Barrington senior Jessica Horwath really turned the tables on Conant as Horwath rolled off 15 straight service points to stake the Fillies to a commanding 18-4 advantage.
Horwath was also strong on the attack with a team-high 9 kills and 6 aces while teammates Hope Regas and Jenna Meitzler added 4 kills apiece.
"I think it definitely helps to have such a good block out there. We've been really working on that and I think that's been a big improvement especially for our defense too," said Horwath. "Having that intimidating force at the net causes the other team to make more errors, and that just allows me to keep on serving. We knew we had to stay disciplined for sure, and coming into conference we know we're going to be having a lot of matches. And we're going to have to minimize the amount of points that we give each team so we can keep our energy going."
An ace by Meitzler in the second set gave the Fillies a 16-9 lead and the Cougars were never able to get closer than 16-10 the rest of the way.
An ace by Barrington's Gwen Adler (10 assists) boosted the lead to 23-12 before another service point by Adler set the stage for match point with a 24-12 lead. A spike by Meitzler put the finishing touches on the victory. Meitzler added 6 assists while junior teammate Molly Kozak had a team-high 8 digs.
"We worked on some things we've been working on in practice so I thought they did a nice job of taking what we've done in practice and putting it into a match situation," said Barrington coach Michelle Jakubowski, whose team hosts state-ranked Huntley on Wednesday. "I think we've been a really strong serving team this year and that helps to put people out of system which makes us offensive-minded a little more. We're getting better every match defensively and I think our block is getting better which is helping our back row play."