Girls volleyball: Kylie Schulze surpasses 2,000 career assists; Woodstock North jumps ahead of Richmond-Burton in KRC race

WOODSTOCK – Woodstock North suffered its only Kishwaukee River Conference loss last month after it failed to put away Richmond-Burton after winning the first set.

The Thunder made sure that didn’t happen again.

“The first time we played them, we had a lot of confidence, but I think sometimes confidence can take you a little too far,” Thunder senior setter Kylie Schulze said. “I feel like this time, we were more prepared for them. They’re probably the team with the best and most consistent hitters that we see.”

In a battle of conference co-leaders, it was the Thunder who grabbed control of the KRC race Tuesday with a 25-18, 25-19 win over the Rockets.

Woodstock North (22-5, 7-1 KRC) can earn a share of its third consecutive KRC title with a win against Johnsburg on Wednesday. R-B, meanwhile, dropped one match behind the Thunder and are now 16-9, 6-2. The Rockets don’t play again until Thursday at home against Harvard.

Thunder coach Eric Schulze, Kylie’s dad, said the most important outcome Tuesday didn’t have anything to do with the conference standings.

“What made it important was we had to show that we had grown since the last time we faced them,” Eric Schulze said. “In our losses this season, we haven’t handled adversity like I would like us to. I wanted to see us move into a new gear, and I saw that tonight.”

“We were sloppy early, but the girls played through it. They didn’t seem to get too worried or too concerned about those mistakes. They just started cleaning things up and got it going.”

Kylie Schulze, a Loyola University commit, surpassed 2,000 career assists in the win, but it was her strong serving in the second set that helped push the Thunder over the top. Schulze, who recently added a jump serve, had two aces during a 7-0 run that turned a 10-8 deficit into a 15-10 lead.

Richmond-Burton cut the lead to 16-14 on kill by Elissa Furlan, but that was the closest the Rockets got.

Kylie Schulze (17 assists, eight digs, three kills, two aces) routinely fed her outsides on the left pin. Katie Wickersheim (eight digs) and Lexi Hansen each had eight kills, Devynn Schulze had 13 digs, and Dani Hansen finished with six kills.

Lexi Hansen said there were a lot of pre-match nerves that showed up early.

“We wanted to win so bad that you could probably tell that we were too hyped,” Lexi Hansen said. “I was myself. In the end, we calmed down and we made it happen.”

Woodstock North’s block did a nice job of slowing down the Rockets’ biggest threats. Maggie Uhwat led R-B with four kills, while Furlan and Kaitlyn Lehecka had two apiece.

“Our game is to the pins,” Eric Schulze said. “But our middles work their butts off. They’re not big offensive threats, but they do the dirty work.”

Rockets coach Mike Kamholz said the Thunder looked like a different team.

“The way they were serving and hitting, they were much stronger than the first time we saw them,” Kamholz said. “They had a good game plan, they knew what we were going to do, and some of the adjustments we tried to do didn’t take as well as we had hoped.

“A ton of pressure. This is the third year in a row where pressure of this match kind of got to us. It’s something we’ve got to continue to work on and fight against.”

Johnsburg beat Woodstock North over the weekend at the Huntley Invitational, so the Thunder aren’t taking their next opponent lightly.

“They have the momentum on us, so we have to be ready to fight,” Kylie Schulze said. “We’ll have a lot of energy tomorrow.”