Girls volleyball: Kaneland starts Interstate 8 title defense with win over L-P

LA SALLE – After winning three consecutive Interstate 8 Conference championships, the Kaneland girls volleyball team expects to be in the title hunt again this fall.

“Nothing is handed to us, but I feel that in the past we’ve won conference so many times that we can definitely pull it out this year. We just have to stay strong and stay bonded as a team.”

—  Mia Vassallo, Kaneland setter

“Nothing is handed to us, but I feel that in the past we’ve won conference so many times that we can definitely pull it out this year,” Kaneland libero Mia Vassallo said. “We just have to stay strong and stay bonded as a team.”

The Knights started their quest for four in a row Tuesday with a 25-23, 25-20 victory over La Salle-Peru in the conference opener for both teams.

“I thought we did really good for our first conference game,” Vassallo said. “We obviously need to work on some talking and stuff like that, but I think overall we played great. This is just a great beginning of the rest of our conference season.

“It’s just the beginning. Obviously, we have to keep fighting. We just have to keep playing our best, working on the little things and just playing as a team. Nothing’s handed to us, so we just have to play our best every game and give it our all.”

The Knights jumped out to a 7-1 lead in the first set, then held off the Cavaliers, allowing the set to be tied but never trailing.

In the second set, Kaneland took control with a seven-point service run to go up 18-9.

“I think we were a little slow the first set,” Kaneland coach Cyndi Violett said. “We weren’t connecting with our middles at all. We were just kind of flat-footed and not aggressive. In the second set, we came back a little bit better. We started hitting our middles and started to realize and finally picked up that they were tipping the heck out of us.”

After falling behind 7-1 in the first set, Ava Currie recorded two blocks in the next three points to help slow down Kaneland’s momentum.

A kill by Addison Urbanski and a Kaneland error pulled L-P within two at 12-10. The Cavs eventually tied it at 19-19 on three consecutive Kaneland errors.

But L-P never took the lead and Kaneland ended the set on a kill by Delaney Calabrese.

“I thought it was a well-played match,” L-P coach Mark Haberkorn said. “I thought both teams played with a lot of intensity. It was a match between two teams that are playing very well. I thought we competed very well.

“It came down to, we got behind both sets and then we made our run at the end. We had our chances in Set 1, and we just came up a little short. In the second set, we ran into a hot server. We struggled with one rotation. We got down, but we didn’t get our heads down. We played hard and made a run at them at the end.”

The Cavs started well in the second set as two kills and a block by Currie and a block by Katie Sowers helped L-P take a 5-3 lead.

Kaneland led 11-9 when Francesca Brandonisio stepped to the service line and rattled off seven straight points, including three aces, to extend the Knights’ lead to 18-9.

“We started being aggressive,” Violett said. “Frankie just went out there and realized she needed to serve aggressive. She was hitting the spots that were being called. She probably was the only one who was serving aggressively.”

Kaneland middle Sophie Knazur put down a kill to give Brandonisio the serve and she had a kill on a free ball during the service run. She finished with six kills during the second set.

“It takes the block off our outside hitter, Rosie [Karl], who’s our No. 1 hitter” Violett said. “If we can get our middles going, then they can’t key on her and block her. That’s the biggest thing is getting those middles going.”

Karl finished with 10 kills for the Knights (6-4, 1-0 I8).

For L-P (11-3, 0-1), Urbanski had 11 digs, 10 points, seven kills, seven assists and three blocks, Currie had five kills and four blocks and Sowers contributed 11 assists, three kills and a block.

L-P won the sophomore match 25-19, 23-25, 25-19. At the freshman level, the L-P Red team won 25-10, 19-25, 26-24, while the Green team split 25-22, 21-25.