Key to Plainfield North comeback over Plainfield East? Confidence at service line

PLAINFIELD – Things didn’t start out well Tuesday night for Plainfield North’s volleyball team in the annual Battle of 119th Street with district rival Plainfield East.

The Tigers committed several unforced errors in the first set, and the Bengals came away with a 25-20 victory on their own floor, putting North behind the proverbial 8-ball.

The Tigers were able to extricate themselves from that situation thanks to an incredible serving run by sophomore libero Rylee Richards, who started the season as an outside hitter. With the second set tied at 12, Richards served eight straight points – seven of them aces – to push her team out to a 20-12 lead en route to a 25-15 victory, a score they then repeated in the third set to take the match as Richards added three more aces to finish with 10.

“I’ve never had a match with that many aces,” Richards said. “I don’t know what it was. I was just trying to serve it to the zones that Coach [Matt Slechta] was telling me to.

“After losing the first set, we wanted to try to get over our mistakes, put them behind us and bring back some energy. We were pretty pumped up to play another Plainfield team. I think we are playing better now than we were at the start of the year. We are more consistent, and this is the time of year to be playing your best with regionals coming up soon.”

North (7-22, 4-4) got out to a quick 3-0 lead in the first set, but East (6-17 1-7) countered with a 5-0 spurt of its own. North was able to open up a 14-10 advanatge, but again East rallied, taking a 15-14 lead on an ace by Faith Fitzgerald.

North tied it on a serving error before East gained a 17-15 lead. Then North tied it again. After that, East outscored the Tigers 8-3. During the stretch, Marisaa Romero and Emma Rivera each had an ace, and Lucy Dennis and Kyra Jordan each had a kill, with Jordan’s ending the set.

“This was a typical Plainfield-Plainfield match,” Slechta said. “Once we calmed down our emotions, we played pretty well. We missed a lot of serves in the first set. We changed things a bit in the second and third sets, and our serving gave us a big boost.

“Our two freshmen [Claudia Los and Lindey Balsano] played very well. They keep getting better, so it looks good both for this season and for the future.”

The second set was a back-and-forth affair with ties at 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 and 12 before Richards went on her serving run. The Tigers seized that momentum and never looked back.

Los finished with a team-high six kills, while Balsano and Gia Burton each had five.

The Tigers never relinquished the lead in the second set after going up 20-12 and trailed only 1-0 and 2-1 in the third. Plainfield East cut a 16-10 deficit to 16-14 in the third set on a kill by Jordan, two by Gabby Schemidt and a combined block by Schemidt and Sydney Myers. Schemidt finished with a match-high 10 kills, while Myers had three blocks to go with two kills.

Morgan Rutkowski added four kills for the Bengals.

“We played well in the first set, but the serve-receive got away from us in the last two,” first-year East coach Kendall Rivecco said. “That’s not like us. We have been a pretty good serve-receiving team all year, but we lost some confidence in it tonight.

“We played well in stretches, but we have to do that more consistently. I thought Gabby Schemidt was super aggressive tonight, and our setter, Faith Fitzgerald, had a great game plan of spreading things around. Our middles [Myers and Bailey Jackson] played well. Myers is only a sophomore, but she has stepped into the role and really rocked it.”