Hot Hawks roll past Stillman in conference match

In post game interviews Tuesday night, Oregon volleyball coach Faith McNamee stressed the team angle.

After a 25-13 and 25-12 thrashing of Stillman Valley, those words certainly rang true.

“We have a great team that works well together,” McNamee said. “Our defense was on and we were communicating.

It wasn’t supposed to be this easy either. Stillman Valley (12-14, 5-2) came in with only one loss in conference play.

“We gave up a lot of errors early and that’s a kiss of death,” SV coach Jamie McCarty.

In the first game, Oregon doubled up the score on the Cardinals early with star players Gylian Finch and Bailey Nelson closing things out.

Finch had four straight serves that SV players couldn’t get over the net and Nelson tacked on a pair of kills for the final points.

“We had a good practice yesterday with more trust in the setter communication,” Finch said.

“Oregon did a nice job of passing and getting the ball to the setter (Jasmine Herbst),” McCarty said. “Besides making it tough for us on service, they have really good hitters too.”

Finch got Oregon rolling in the second game with a kill and three straight unforced Cardinal errors gave the Hawks a 5-0 lead. The closest SV would come the rest of the way was 7-4.

Floor leader Aleah Wight then helped build the Hawk lead back up to 10-4 on her service, including an ace.

After a monster slam by Finch made it 16-8, the Cardinals resigned themselves to a similar fate as game one.

“I think we were expecting it to be closer. This was a big game for us,” McNamee said.

Oregon moved to 18-4 overall and 7-0 in conference action.

In MaxPreps state ranking, the Hawks are No. 11 in 2A, three spots ahead of Galena, which received a top sectional seed over Oregon.

As the season has progressed, that teamwork McNamee spoke of is paying dividends and has put the Hawks on par with any small-school team in northern Illinois.

“We were hot tonight. It showed,” McNamee said.