No knocking out the champs
By KEVIN CHROUST – editorial@kcchronicle.com
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| Members of the St. Charles East girls volleyball team celebrate their win against York in Thursday's Class 4A Geneva Sectional title game. (Wendy Kemp – For The Chronicle) |
GENEVA – Game 1 was encouraging. Game 2 was alarming. And Game 3? Game 3 was exactly what has come to be expected of St. Charles East volleyball when the season is on the line.
The Saints rebounded from a Game 2 loss Thursday in the IHSA Class 4A Geneva Sectional Championship match to top York, 25-22, 18-25, 25-19, and march on to their own supersectional this weekend. East will play Cary-Grove at 6 p.m.
“We definitely had that sense of urgency in the third game to get back out there,” East senior Jacqui Seidel said. “Having the experience of being in that type of match before and just having players from the team last year who have really taught the newer, younger players how to handle the pressure really made the difference.”
East (32-6) changed things up after Game 2 in hopes of freeing up Seidel on the right side. It worked.
The senior tallied eight of her 11 kills in the decisive game to help kill any momentum built by the Dukes (28-9) the game before. Seidel, a Ball State recruit, notched kills set up by freshman Erienne Barry (27 assists) on five of East’s final seven points.
“We rotated our kids around and had a better matchup for Jacqui in the front row so she was able to be more successful,” East coach Jennie Kull said, crediting assistant coach Mike Bui for suggesting the move.
Sophomore Meghan Niski had a team-high 13 kills to help account for her injured senior sister, Caroline. The sophomore was relied on on the left side heavily at the net in the Game 1 win. But she also had 13 digs, none bigger than the one that set up an East point to extend the Game 3 lead to 12-10.
She moved from the left side almost to the right sideline for the sprawling dig, which allowed what ended up being a five-point run to continue and eventually give East a 14-10 lead.
York coach Patty Iverson saw her team’s blocking as the difference between winning Game 2 and losing the first and last.
“We did some things we don’t normally do,” Iverson said. “And I think if we had brought our normal game with us we probably would have done a nice job today. We didn’t block well. That was the biggest thing. It took us out of our defense.”
The sectional championship pairs the Saints with Cary-Grove, an easy winner against Huntley on Thursday, in the supersectional. It’s a rematch of an early-season game in which East fell in two games.
A little revenge combined with the fact that Kull has never coached a supersectional at home has the defending state champs on their toes already.
“It is exciting,” Kull said of the chance to play at home. “It’s going to be nice, and that’s one of the things we really wanted to push for. That was one of our goals at the beginning of the year was to definitely make sure we got there because it was at our home.”
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