Joliet Catholic stuns Joliet West for an upset victory in straight sets

JOLIET – The Joliet Catholic volleyball team entered Thursday night knowing they had the talent and ability to compete with and beat teams like Joliet West. The Angels just hadn’t been able to take that talent and tie it together on a consistent basis.

While Thursday’s match was, in a sense, all over the place, one thing was consistent: The Angels never lacked for fight. That fight led to a result they always knew they were capable of.

After a back and forth first set that saw JCA stage an impressive comeback, it was all Angels in the second set as they pulled off an upset of the Tigers with a win in straight sets, 25-23, 25-13.

JCA (8-6) has had moments of brilliance this season. But for every two wins they’d get, they’d follow it up with another two losses. After a somewhat slow start Thursday, they came together to put up one of their best efforts of the season, handing the Tigers just their second loss of the year.

“I think this week was really emotionally and mentally challenging for us as a team and we really came together,” JCA coach Kisha Cameron said. “We really came together as a team. Our game plan was to come in as a team and no matter what happened we were going to do it together. ...I trusted that if we gave it our all, stay focused and helped each other it would come out this way.”

The Angels were able to pull it out thanks in large part to the efforts of Ellie Blotnik (seven kills, eight digs), Olivia Emerson (five kills, nine assists and four digs), Maggie Tibbott (12 assists, four digs), Brooke Simon (five kills) and Ella Godeaux (13 digs).

It didn’t come easy. After falling behind 5-2, the Angels went on a 4-1 run to tie things up before allowing a 3-0 run to the Tigers. The Angels tied the game again at 9-9 with a 3-0 run of their own before another 3-0 run by the Tigers made it 9-12. The Tigers grew their lead to 15-10 which led to Cameron calling a timeout.

“We started a little rocky which is something we’ve been working on all season,” Blotnik said. “We weren’t feeling good about how we were playing, but we knew once we started feeling good about how we were playing it was going to be lights out.”

Lights out it was. The Angels scored five consecutive points out of the timeout to tie the game once more before the two teams began trading points. Down 19-17, JCA scored five straight to take a 22-19 edge after not having led all evening. Joliet West didn’t give up, but the Angels got the points they needed to win 25-23.

Set two, on the other hand, was all JCA. The Angels jumped out to a 6-1 edge that grew to 12-4 in the blink of an eye. While the Tigers began competing better from there, engaging in more of a point exchange, the deficit was too great to overcome as JCA got the 25-13 win.

“I really think it was our mentality (that allowed us to dominate the second set),” Emerson said. “We went in really aggressive and had the drive to win. I think that helped us push through, we were very confident in how we were playing. That helped us get it done.”

As for the Tigers (12-2), it was a frustrating evening that they saw slip away from them after the early success. Julia Adams (three aces, eight assists), Lina Govoni (six assists), Lexie Grevengoed (eight kills), Sidney Barlong (eight digs) and Eden Eyassu (six digs) put up solid individual efforts for Joliet West.

“We need to play as a team,” Tigers coach Christopher Lincoln said. “We didn’t play as a team tonight. We took moments off and JCA did not. They had some unassisted balls and made them work. ...JCA fought and we didn’t fight. Props to JCA for pushing through.”