Girls volleyball: Strong defense, service aces help St. Charles North to straight set win over Wheaton North

ST. CHARLES – The second set could not have started in a worse way for St. Charles North.

After taking the first set of the DuKane Conference opener rather handily, the North Stars found themselves in a 10-1 hole against Wheaton North to open the second set.

Then the ball was placed in the hands of junior Haley Burgdorf. After 12 straight serves, the North Stars found themselves up again.

“It was a real exciting feeling,” Burgdorf said. “It just showed us that we can come back from the adversity that we had throughout the team. And once we focus on our side and limit the errors, then we can come back and win the game.”

The rally, along with some solid defensive and service play, helped propel the North Stars to a 25-15, 25-20 victory over the Falcons on Sept. 10.

For St. Charles North (8-1, 1-0), it is the best opening to a season since 2018, when it started 13-1.

Coach Lindsey Hawkins said her team is playing well but feels there are improvements to be made.

“We definitely have some spurts where we’re not being as mentally tough as I know we can be, so we want to clean that up.” Hawkins said. “We definitely want to continue on this streak, but we have things we can do better and get better at.”

Wheaton North managed to tie the second set at 16 before the North Stars pulled off a 9-4 run to close out the win.

One thing that St. Charles North found itself doing well throughout the match was serving. The North Stars finished the night with nine service aces. Mia McCall led the team with three, while Burgdorf, Sidney Wright and Amber Czerniak each had two.

“My coach told me back in the day that you’re going to live and die behind the service line, so you better be good at it,” Hawkins said. “We want to be really aggressive with that serve because we want to get teams out of system, so that’s something that we work on every day. And it seems to help, so we hope that they continue that aggressiveness.”

Both teams excelled at defense throughout the match, keeping plays alive with pancakes and quick recoveries on each point.

“We have tried to instill a no ball hits the floor type of mentality in our game,” Hawkins said. “We knew that Wheaton North would be that way as well and we were ready for balls to come over that we thought were down. We worked on having that mentality of going after every ball in practice and not allowing your body or mind to tell you you can’t get it.”

Despite the loss, coach Justin Hineman said he was happy with how Wheaton North (7-7, 0-1) played at the net, especially with a player such as Burgdorf on the opposite side.

“We knew that they packed a lot of power offensively and I felt like we were able to kind of neutralize that to the best of our abilities,” Hineman said. “Obviously, Haley’s a fantastic player, so she’s going to get hers, but I felt like we made her make some decisions, so I was happy with the way we played defensively today.”