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Sports
Area volleyball teams enjoy productive start : Sports : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisArea volleyball teams enjoy productive start
| Panthers, Wolves win twice at Plainfield North Invite, primed to meet Tuesday in SPC opener
| by Kristin Sharp
| 9/2/2010
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The Plainfield North Invite has proved to be a challenging start for the area girls' volleyball teams in recent years, but both teams managed to notch a few wins in the opening weekend.
Oswego East posted a 1-2 record in the Grey Pool to move into the Bronze Division during championship play last Saturday and went 1-1 to finish second in its bracket with a 2-3 overall record. Meanwhile, Oswego went 0-3 in the White Pool, but went 2-0 in the Copper Division to finish 2-3 over the weekend.
Oswego East junior libero Jordan Reifsteck and Oswego senior hitter Mallory Brainerd were both named to the All-Tournament team for their efforts over five matches.
Oswego East will face a second straight weekend of tournament play when the Wolves enter the two-day Joliet Central Invite on Friday. Oswego will spend the week in the practice gym before Southwest Prairie Conference play opens next Tuesday with Oswego East making the trip to Oswego at 6 p.m.
Oswego East
The Wolves opened the Plainfield North Invite with an 18-25, 15-25 loss to Huntley, but rebounded in their second match with a 25-20, 25-20 win over Joliet.
Oswego East completed pool play on Saturday morning with a 13-25, 25-22, 13-25 loss to Batavia before moving into the Bronze Division bracket. The Wolves defeated Marian Catholic 28-26, 25-23 before falling to Providence 25-17, 25-18 to end the day.
"We lost in the Bronze Division championship to Providence, and they beat Plainfield North. They're supposed to be one of the better teams in our area so I wouldn't say it was too bad of a loss," Oswego East head coach Adam Thurlwell said. "Our goal was to come out of there with a winning record, but Providence was a tough team. They were solid all the way around. We realized what our weaknesses were, but we couldn't do much about them yet."
Reifsteck finished with 55 digs on her way to the All-Tournament team. Over five matches, senior Viola Lisha had 19 kills and 24 digs, senior Nicolette Sampson had 15 kills while junior Natalia Mendieta had 15 kills, 28 assists and seven digs. Senior Anne Marie Sullivan had 46 assists and seven digs while senior Cally Koppin had seven solo blocks and seven assisted blocks in the tournament.
"We're an aggressive serving team, so our serving wasn't that bad," Thurlwell said. "We want to work on our serve-receive a little bit more and just try and get our hitters and setters on the same page. We were a little off with our timing. We just need to clean up the little stuff; the core looked good."
Oswego East will enter the eight-team Joliet Central Invite Friday at 5 p.m. against Wilmington before facing East Aurora at 6:15 p.m. On Saturday, the Wolves complete pool play at 9 a.m. against Glenbard West. Championship play is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. The opposite pool is comprised of Metea Valley, Sandwich, Joliet Central and Deerfield.
"Glenbard West should be pretty decent. I'd like to think we can win the tournament," Thurlwell said. "No one knows anything about us, and we don't know much about the other teams. I think that plays to our favor. We may look short on paper, but we're athletic. I can substitute players and not skip a beat."
Oswego
The Panthers (2-3) opened pool play last Friday with a 21-25, 16-25 loss to Lincoln-Way before dropping a 20-25, 12-25 match to Crystal Lake South to close out the day.
"It was nice to get on the court, finally. We tried a couple different lineups we wanted to see. We held our own with some of the scores, especially in the first games," Oswego head coach Erica Lorenz said.
Against Lincoln-Way, junior Sydney Volovski had nine digs, four kills and three blocks, junior Katy Kennedy made 12 digs and an ace and junior Amy Holpuch had two aces and four assists while senior Mallory Brainerd had five digs and a pair of kills.
On Saturday, Oswego completed pool play against Rosary - which went on to win the tournament title - and lost 16-25, 20-25 to the Royals. Junior Katherine Daley made three blocks, Volovski had four kills and five digs, Brainerd made seven digs and junior Destiny Stuersel had eight assists and two aces. Kennedy made eight digs, junior Brittany Maertzig had three kills and senior Morgan Tyner made five digs.
After an 0-3 finish in pool play, Oswego opened play in the Copper Division and went 2-0 to take first place in its bracket. In the semifinal game, the Lady Panthers topped Plainfield Central 25-20, 17-25, 25-22 before taking the final game against Bolingbrook by a score of 25-19, 16-25, 25-22.
"We played Rosary on Saturday and we played much better. Rosary won the tournament, so we lost all our pool play games, but in the afternoon when we were in bracket play I was really happy beating Plainfield Central and Bolingbrook to take first in our division," Lorenz said. "It was nice to see us improve as the days went on."
Against Plainfield Central, Volovski made eight kills, two aces and five digs, Daley had three kills and four blocks and Brainerd had eight kills and 11 digs. Stuersel had four kills, 26 assists and eight digs, Kennedy had a pair of aces and eight digs and junior Shelby Ritsema made six kills.
In the Bolingbrook match, Daley added four kills, Volovski had six digs, two aces and five kills and Brainerd finished with four digs, an ace and three kills. Stuersel had 12 assists, three digs, two blocks and two kills, Kennedy had three aces and six digs, senior Ali Van Horn had a block and four kills and Ritsema made an ace, four digs and two kills.
"Mallory made the All-Tournament team, which we were really happy about," Lorenz said. "Sydney Volovski had some really good kills and Shelby Ritsema played all the way around at the end of the day there and she did a really nice job."
Oswego will have a long schedule break before facing its next opponent on the court. The Southwest Prairie Conference season opens next Tuesday with a home match against Oswego East at 6 p.m.
"The things we want to work on, we have plenty of time to work on them," Lorenz said. "We have so many different options. We just have to find the right matchup."
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