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Sports
Wildcats get last laugh : Sports : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisWildcats get last laugh
| Oswego girls' volleyball can't pull off win in regional opener
| by Kristin Sharp
| 11/4/2010
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There were few surprises on the girls' volleyball court when Oswego and Plainfield Central met in the Class 4A East Aurora Regional quarterfinal match.
Marking the fifth match between the Southwest Prairie Conference rivals, the Oct. 27 meeting held new meaning as the Wildcats ended the Panthers' season with a 25-23, 25-20 victory to advance to the semifinal match against No. 2 Hinsdale Central.
Oswego ended the 2010 season with a 13-22 overall record and a 2-3 record against Plainfield Central while the Wildcats' season ended one hour later with a 13-25, 18-25 loss to the Red Devils. Hinsdale Central went on to defeat No. 10 Naperville Central 25-17, 25-5 in the regional final last Saturday to move into the Romeoville Sectional semifinal on Tuesday.
"It was pretty bittersweet, especially losing to Plainfield Central," Oswego head coach Erica Lorenz said. "It was the fifth time seeing them too and now they came out on top. It wasn't the way that we wanted to come out, but I thought the girls played pretty well considering the way we've been playing the last few weeks."
Oswego won just two of its final 10 matches of the 2010 season, including a two-game loss to Plainfield Central just eight days earlier. The Panthers opened the regional contest with a well-placed kill from senior hitter Mallory Brainerd and the scoreboard was tied five different times before junior hitter Sydney Volovski's kill gave the Panthers an 8-7 edge.
Plainfield Central benefited from three Oswego errors to eventually build a three-point lead (11-8) and the Panthers trailed 15-11 before junior hitter Shelby Ritsema sent a kill over the net.
The sideout put Brainerd back to serve and Oswego closed the scoring gap, trailing 16-14. An error on the Wildcats put senior Morgan Tyner at the serving line and thanks to a Volovski kill and three Wildcat errors, Oswego built a 5-0 run to take an 18-16 lead in Game 1.
"That was one of the first times when we've been down by a couple of times and actually came back and got on top," Lorenz said. "Those were little milestones that I'm proud of the girls for. Those are things we've worked on all year that when you're down a couple points, you have to push back. It's nice to be on top in points and ahead, but sometimes you have those little mistakes here and there that come back to haunt you. I truly feel that if we had a couple weeks, we'd be going back up. We've been up and down all season and we were working our way back up; we just ran out of time."
Points from junior Destiny Stuersel and Volovski gave Oswego a 21-17 lead, but Plainfield Central forged ahead after a timeout and tied the match at 23 on an ace serve from junior Taryn Trubich.
Oswego called a timeout, but the Panthers' next attack sailed out of bounds and the final attempt at a kill landed in the net to give Plainfield Central the 25-23 win.
Plainfield Central kept momentum on its side to start Game 2 and built a 6-0 lead before Oswego took a timeout. An error by the Wildcats put the Panthers on the scoreboard and Oswego battled back to trail 8-4 after a point from Volovski.
The Wildcats maintained its lead, taking a 12-7 advantage on a tipped ball, but the see saw continued as the Panthers came within three (16-13) on back-to-back points from Volovski and junior Brittany Maertzig.
Oswego fell behind 18-13 when Lorenz called a timeout, and after the Panthers came within two, Plainfield Central took a timeout with a 22-20 lead.
The Wildcats held a 23-20 lead when the Panthers made two miscues at the net to end the game.
"We tried to work through the game and we had hard practices all week to get ready for this game, but it just didn't work out," Brainerd said. "We were just talking about it in our huddle that we ended the season with a tough game. We didn't just blow it off; we played hard."
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