St. Charles North grabs second regional title in three years with straight-set win over Wheaton North

ROSELLE — Lindsey Hawkins was OK with missing trick-or-treating this year. Instead, she got to bring home a different kind of treat.

A regional title.

After falling in the regional final last season, second-seeded St. Charles North left zero doubts on winning a second regional title in three years, as North Stars took down seventh-seeded Wheaton North 25-14, 25-15 to win the Class 4A Lake Park Regional.

“It feels really great,” the North Stars’ head coach said. “I was missing that plaque, so to bring it home feels pretty good. I’m just really proud of the way that they played tonight.”

The North Stars (30-6) showed their most desire for the regional title at the end of the second set. After the Falcons cut their deficit to 17-15, the North Stars rallied for eight straight points to put away the set. Hawkins said she felt it was the defense they were playing that helped inspire the team to finish the match strong.

“We talked to them about playing really good defense, and they did that,” Hawkins said. “There were a lot of great one-arm touches and just really good, scrappy defense. And we told them to not let up and make sure that we stayed hungry, so it was really nice to see that they did that and were able to finish it pretty well.”

At the service line for the North Stars during that stretch was junior Mia McCall, who showed excellence on the line with her final three serves. The setter recorded back-to-back aces to bring the North Stars to match point before forcing the Falcons to send her final serve easily over the net, where junior Haley Burgdorf sealed the deal with a kill.

“I just felt confident in the training that I had and that I could put the ball in and be aggressive with it,” McCall said. “Knowing that I needed to get the other team out-of-system in order to help us.”

Burgdorf, a Penn State commit, led the team with 14 kills. While Hawkins knew getting the ball to Burgdorf would be the key to success, she was also impressed from the play of other attackers such as junior Amber Czerniak (five kills), who Hawkins described as the team’s “silent killer.”

“Everybody in the gym knows that the ball needs to go to Haley a lot because she is amazing,” Hawkins said. “But I think a lot of people have started to recognize that Amber is kind of the unsung hero of this team. She’s getting a lot of those scramble balls and tooling off the block. She’s doing a really good job of taking care of the ball for us.”

For the Falcons, the season ends with a record of 14-11. Wheaton North managed to narrow the margin from as much as seven points to as little as two in both sets, but couldn’t find the extra gear to finish out the sets.

Wheaton North coach Justin Hineman said he was very proud with how his girls played, and they have some work to do to make sure there’s a different outcome in 2025.

“Offensively, we couldn’t quite get them uncomfortable enough to shift the pressure back on them,” Hineman said. “But it was a great fight. I thought the girls battled from the get go. Just wish we were able to do a little bit more offensively to put them a little bit off-kilter.”

The Falcons were led by senior Olivia Zamis and junior Ava Schell, who each had three kills. Sophomore Emily Rochford and junior Abby Lee also recorded a pair of aces in the match.

https://www.shawlocal.com/kane-county-chronicle/2024/11/01/st-charles-north-grabs-second-regional-title-in-three-years-with-straight-set-win-over-wheaton-north/