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Sports
Ready to roll : Sports : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisReady to roll
| Oswego East's win over Plainfield North creates big Senior Night matchup
| by Kristin Sharp
| 10/20/2011
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The Oswego East girls' volleyball team doesn't need to be reminded what's at stake over the next five days.
The Wolves hold the potential for a .500 finish in Southwest Prairie Conference play on Senior Night today, Thursday, against Plainfield Central and have the opportunity to defend the Kaneland Spikefest Invitational title on Saturday.
But that's nothing compared to what's in store next week: the potential for the program's first-ever regional championship.
"We are ready to get rolling. We're ready to win this. Dominate our senior year of volleyball and end on a great note," said Oswego East senior outside hitter Aliyah Everson, who finished with five kills.
Oswego East enters the postseason next Tuesday in the Class 4A Lockport Regional as the No. 11 seed and will meet the No. 7 host Porters at 5:30 p.m. The winner advances to the regional final next Thursday, Oct. 27 - likely against No. 2 Naperville North, which will meet the winner of the No. 15 Bolingbrook/ No. 18 Plainfield South play-in game.
"Lockport beat Naperville North and I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but last year we beat West Aurora and that wasn't supposed to happen either," Oswego East senior libero Jordan Reifsteck said. "Anything can happen and Naperville North is beatable. We can win a regional championship."
The Wolves helped build momentum toward those achievements with a strong two-game sweep over Plainfield North on Tuesday night.
Trailing 18-11 in Game 1, the Wolves came storming back and eventually won the match 26-24, 25-15 to improve to 13-12 overall and 6-7 in SPC play.
"This is just a huge, emotional time for the girls and I think they responded well," Oswego East head coach Adam Thurlwell said. "With the senior leadership we have and the confidence the juniors have and the connections that are being made, they want it really bad. They don't just talk about Lockport. We have to look at it one game at a time, but they want to see Naperville North. They want to put a plaque up in the hallway. They have that thirst to win."
In Game 1, Reifsteck aced two serves to help score five consecutive points and create a big point swing and cut Plainfield North's lead to 18-16 before a Tiger timeout. Everson stepped up with two well-placed kills out of the right side and the back row dug up a Plainfield North attack as the Wolves trailed by one, 21-20.
"We went on a few runs serving," Reifsteck said. "I feel like service helped us a lot in the first game to pick it up."
A strong block from Plainfield North's front row put the Tigers in position to seal the win, leading 24-20, but the Wolves weren't ready to end the game. A miscue and a rotation error on Plainfield East forced a 24-22 score and freshman outside hitter Kelly Bertrand (7 kills) put down two big kills to tie the game at 24.
"We were dealing with a lot of adversity at the beginning of the game," Everson said.
"We had a new rotation and we were out of the system. We were a little rough, but we were here to play and we were here to win, and that's what we did."
Plainfield North faltered from there. With senior setter Natalia Mendieta back to serve, the Tigers struggled with their serve receive and Mendieta (5 aces, 11 points) had a pair of aces to close out the 26-24 win.
"We were behind from the get-to. We were not attacking the ball. We were not passing the ball," Thurlwell said. "Our serving helped us in the first game. Nicole Kindelin did a nice job, Jordan did a great job, Aliyah, Natalia (Mendieta). Serving helped us in the first game big time."
Oswego East jumped out to a 6-3 lead in Game 2 after a Bertrand kill, an ace serve from Kindelin and two points from Reifsteck (4 aces, nine digs) on a tip and an ace serve.
A pair of errors on the Wolves let the Tigers back into the game, trailing 9-8, but that's as close as Plainfield North would get on the scoreboard.
The Tigers struggled with both its passing game and its defensive game plan as Oswego East extended its lead 16-10 before Everson's tip kill. Everson had one more successful attack for a 19-11 lead. Plainfield North helped the Wolves to a 22-14 lead and Everson had an ace serve before junior outside hitter Brittany Warnecke's kill gave Oswego East a sideout and a 24-15 lead.
Plainfield North put up a successful block on the next play, but a serving error clinched the win for Oswego East.
"The second game was us playing our game," Thurlwell said. "Blocking picked up, passing was much better - all that stuff. That was the Oswego East I like."
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