Fast start, aces help Hall bounce Lady Bruins
By Jim Dresbach
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sports@bcrnews.com
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| Hall’s Katelyn Raineri makes a hit for the Lady Red Devils as St. Bede’s Hailee Brayton reaches for the sky for a block in Thursday’s regional semifinals in Wenona. Hall won 2-0. (BCR photo/Jim Dresbach) |
WENONA – The Hall Lady Red Devil volleyball team advanced to the Class 2A Fieldcrest championship match Thursday evening, while young, yet scrappy, St. Bede Lady Bruin netters got a preview of what life will be like in the North Central Illinois Conference in 2010.
The Lady Devils (11-24) used a fast start in game one and a comeback mentality in the second game to defeat SBA 25-18, 25-19. The Lady Devils now face NCIC Lincoln foe, the IVC Lady Grey Ghosts, Saturday at 1 p.m.
A quick 6-0 start in Game 1 and three service aces from Brigitte Klein in the match finale proved to ignite Hall past the Lady Bruins.
“We had to start fast; if we start slow, we end slow. We had to put a jump on it right way,” said Hall coach Dani Zellmer, who will be coaching in her first regional championship match Saturday.
The Lady Devils match-opening run included an ace from Katelyn Raineri and a kill from Kelle Nett, and after six volleys, Hall owned a 6-0 lead. The Lady Bruins fought back to slim the HHS lead to three on six occasions, but back-to-back point winners on a Raineri kill and a Klein ace put Hall on top 23-17 late in game one.
Still, with Hall’s hot start, SBA coach Dawn Williams thought her team played the Lady Devils fairly even.
“I told the girls, between the first and second games, to look at the scoreboard — what did we lose by? Seven. How many points did they get on us at the very beginning? We had three mis-hits and three that went out of bounds, so we played with them during the rest of Game (1),” said Williams.
In Game 2, behind the serving of Molly Scott and Taylor Miller, the Lady Bruins pounced to a 4-1 advantage and held the lead for the next 15 points, but Hall’s Klein played a key role in the Game 2 comeback. The HHS junior tied the match at 11 with a kill and put the Lady Devils ahead to stay with back-to-back aces putting Hall in front 16-14. One of Nett’s match-high, nine kills coupled with another Klein ace gave Hall some breathing room and a 19-14 advantage.
“We definitely had to fight for it,” Zellmer said. “We were kind of thought of as maybe a possible underdog; we had to prove some people wrong. If you look at their stats from their girls and the stats from our girls, it was pretty even.”
On the SBA stat sheet, Kayla MacDavitt notched five kills and Hailee Brayton added four and a block, while Bethany Stavrakas and Brittany Burgess combined for 11 digs.
Hall was led by Klein’s five aces and eight service points in the two games, and Raineri downed nine service points. Hall’s play at the net saw Mickey Victor add six kills and Nett send six blocks back at the Lady Bruins, who witnessed line-up problems throughout the season.
“This was only our fourth game where we had our full team,” Williams said. “Tonight was the rotation we wanted to play all season long. We’ve had injuries and illness — like everybody else — all season long. I’m really proud of the way we played.”
Fittingly, the final match of 2009 for SBA, an outgoing member of the Tri-County Conference, took place on the floor of the old Wenona High School, which was a Tri-County fixture until the 1990s. The Fieldcrest regional matches were moved from the Minonk high school to Wenona’s Fieldcrest east campus due to gymnasium floor repairs at the Minonk campus.
“It’s a little different playing NCIC schools than Tri-County schools; we had to adjust to the speed of the game,” Williams said. “Now that we will be going into the NCIC (in the 2010 season), we have a glimpse of what we have to build for. We have four juniors and a whole slew of sophomores coming back with varsity experience.”
In Thursday’s other matches, Fieldcrest downed Kewanee 25-14, 20-25, 25-16 to advance to play IVC in Thursday’s third match of the night. In the opening night finale, the Lady Ghosts dismissed the hosts in two games. 25-13, 25-18. IVC’s Michelle O’Brien had seven kills during the semifinal victory.
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