BELLEVILLE – Edwardsville’s balance on their girls volleyball team has been a big asset for the Tigers this season.
That balance helped the Tigers get off to a big start in the second game of their IHSA Class 4A Chatham Glenwood Sectional semifinal match against O’Fallon Monday night at Belleville West’s gym.
The Tigers, coming off a loss in the opener, stormed out to as much as a 15-3 lead on the Panthers to even the match, then had to find ways to hold off OTHS in a 20-25, 25-9, 25-17 win to advance to Wednesday night’s sectional final against Pekin, 25-22, 25-22 winners over Normal Community in Tuesday’s other semifinal match, at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Chatham for the sectional title; the winner advances to Friday night’s Normal West Super-Sectional against either Minooka or Lisle Benet Academy, whoever comes out of the Aurora Waubonsie Valley Sectional, for the right to advance to next weekend’s state tournament at Illinois State’s Redbird Arena in Normal.
Edwardsville advanced to Wednesday’s match at 31-5, while the Panthers were eliminated at 30-7.
“There’s a lot of nights where we’ll have four or five girls with four or five kills, so it’s been very even spread and the younger kids, every game, just continue to step up and they did that tonight,” said Tiger coach Jami Parker.
Parker had a simple message for the Tigers after dropping the opening game. “It’s playoff ball,” Parker said. “Emotions always run high in the playoffs and they can be apically high one minute and apically low the next; you just have to hold your head and go back out and do what you do well and be consistent.
“They came out after that first game and were really consistent; they held their heads and just played ball – they weren’t intimidated by the situation at all. They did a great job tonight.”
On defense, the Tigers turned in a stellar performance, Parker felt. “We moved our blocking schemes to try to match up a little bit better,” Parker said. “That block really helped us out and kind of get our hitters to where we wanted them to go just a little bit better; we got a lot of good touches on the block as well too.”
“I definitely feel like out girls let up a little bit,” said Panther coach Melissa Massey. “We got a little too comfortable; we talked about that between sets – you can’t let a good team like Edwardsville do that to you, and unfortunately, we did. I think we did better the third set, but I never felt like we got comfortable and played our kind of game where we’re controlling the ball on our side; we were more worried about what they were doing as opposed to what we were doing.
“I felt like they started out great; this was such a great season (for the Panthers) – I would literally look forward to coming out the practice and spending time with the girls. They were a very special group for sure.”
O’Fallon got out to a 6-1 lead on the Tigers early in the opener before the Tigers pulled to 9-7 thanks to some good hits and a couple of Panther miscues before OTHS got on a run that made it 14-8; the teams then traded points for a time that got the game to 17-12 before the Panthers got the game to 19-12 before Edwardsville pulled to within 19-15, but couldn’t get any closer; O’Fallon then slowly pulled away to get the game to 22-15 in their favor before EHS got to 24-20. The Panthers then closed out the game to put the Tigers down by a game.
Game 2 was all Tigers; the game got to 4-2 in EHS’ favor before they went on a hot streak that saw them score 13 of the next 15 points to take command of the game at 15-3; the lead had ballooned to as much as 15-3 at one point of the game. The game soon went to 21-6 as the Tigers quickly closed out the game to force a deciding Game 3; the Tigers seemed ready to put a quick end to that game as they went out to an 8-2 lead before the Panthers got on a run that eventually pulled them to 13-9.
The Tiger lead eventually shrunk to 15-13 and then 16-15, but the Tigers would come up with the answers they needed to hold off O’Fallon, eventually taking a 19-17 lead and scoring the match’s final six points to advance.
Kate Martin led EHS with nine kills, with Storm Suhre adding eight and Maria Smith seven; Rachel Pranger had 13 digs and Megan Woll 12, while Martin had four blocks and Smith and Rachel Verdun had three blocks, with Verdun adding 27 assists and Pranger three service aces, with Alexa Harris acing twice in the match.
Elise Smith had 10 kills for the Panthers, with Lauren Lepere adding six and Katherine Toftemark three; Kaity Mueller had eight digs for the Panthers, with Lepere adding seven, Abby Braswell 25 assists, Hannah Bell a block and Braswell and Smith two aces each.
The win put the Tigers back into the sectional final, where they were eliminated last year; Parker is excited to have another shot at getting to the Super-Sectional. “It’s exciting to be back there again,” Parker said.
