Girls volleyball: Joliet West’s Ava Grevengoed named Player of the Year

JOLIET – Volleyball is a family affair in the Grevengoed household.

Father Chadd played the sport collegiately at Trinity College and Lewis University, and mother Melissa played at Loyola of Chicago, earning a spot in the school’s Hall of Fame. Their children, Ava, Luke and Lexi, all played the sport growing up as well, although Luke has branched off into basketball and currently is a sophomore on the Joliet West varsity team. Lexi currently is in eighth grade and soon will add to the Grevengoed tradition at West.

Ava Grevengoed earned her spot in the family legacy after becoming in the first Joliet West player to record 1,000 kills in their career, and she led the Tigers to back-to-back sectional championships – the first two in school history.

For her efforts, Grevengoed was named 2023 Herald-News Girls Volleyball Player of the Year. For the season, Grevengoed had 509 kills, 210 digs, 53 aces, 26 blocks, and she led the Tigers to a 36-4 record.

Her outstanding season didn’t come out of nowhere.

“I probably had a ball in my hand when I was four or five years old,” Grevengoed said. “Then I played in Tiny Tippers in about second and third grades and started playing club volleyball in fourth grade. I played school ball for Troy and then Joliet West.

“A lot of my teammates from West – Gabby Piazza, Peyton Darguzis, Brooke Schwall, Natalia Harris, Isabella Nelson – all played with me at Troy. We’ve been together since seventh grade. In eighth grade, we were about to play Minooka in the sectional, but it got cancelled due to COVID.

“Then we kept playing together in high school, and it was great.”

While there were several milestone victories for the Tigers during her career, Grevengoed said she would remember the players more than the games.

“The girls are what I will remember the most,” she said. “Olivia Baxter, Peyton Darguzis, Natalia Harris and I were all freshmen that got moved up to varsity. We went something like 2-7 in the conference our freshman year. To go from that to 36-4 our senior year is pretty special, and I will never forget playing with those girls.

“Now, I can hope that Lexi will continue on and hopefully do a little better than I did and finally get West to state. We knew when we came into high school that we wanted to change how people thought about West volleyball. We have done that, and we want to see it keep going.”

Her play earned nothing but praise from coach Chris Lincoln.

“Ava transformed into a workhorse this season,” he said. “Teams tried to stop her or slow her down, but not one was successful. She finished at the very top of 4A with total kills (509) and hitting percentage (.451). That hitting percentage is unheard of and an incredible accomplishment as an outside hitter.

“When looking at Ava’s stats, her hitting is what eyes go to first. However, I believe she is one of the best all-around players in the state. Her serve receive is incredibly clean. Her defense is quick and feisty. And she has an incredible serve that many teams struggled with.”

One of the biggest parts of Grevengoed’s game is her versatility, as she plays the full rotation and rarely comes off the court. In fact, she started her high school career as a setter and didn’t become a full-time outside hitter until her junior season. It was that versatility that attracted the attention of Northern Illinois University, where she will continue her career next year.

“I plan to play the full rotation at NIU,” she said. “Their coach [Sondra Parys] has said that if you can pass, you can play. One of my biggest things is passing, especially in serve receive, so I hope to use that to be able to stay on the court.”

Another strong point of Grevengoed’s game is her ability to change her attack in mid-air. She can go up for a kill thinking she will hit it cross-court, but has the ability to change mid-attack and either tip it over or hit it down the line.

“I have worked on that a lot,” she said. “I am not the tallest person out there, so I have to be able to read the block. I have worked on using that to my advantage and hitting it off their hands so it goes out of bounds or being able to go around it.

“Our setters [Taylor Brenczewski and Julia Adams] have worked really hard and they almost always put the ball in a good spot for me. Even if it’s not perfect, I can still work with it. It comes with working together a lot. [Assistant coach] Katie [Adams, Julia’s mother] saw what I needed and worked hard with the setters to get them to be able to do it.”

Grevengoed’s legacy most likely will be as a part of the team that turned the program around, and it’s something she cherishes.

“When coach Lincoln took over, he told us that he always saw Joliet West as a gritty team,” she said. “We wanted to live up to that expectation. We wanted to frustrate teams because we never let the ball hit the ground. Ever since Troy, we felt like this was our time, and we wanted to show everyone what Joliet West volleyball was. I think we have done that.”