Morris’ Haylee Dunne voted The Herald-News Athlete of the Week

Morris junior volleyball player Haylee Dunne, a 5-foot-5 setter/right-side hitter, had the match of a lifetime in the first round of the Class 3A Morris Regional. Dunne served 25 straight points in a 25-10, 25-0 win over Thornton. For her efforts, she was voted the Herald-News Athlete of the Week. Dunne collected 235 votes, followed by Joliet West volleyball player Ava Grevengoed (199), Romeoville volleyball player Chloe Anderson (118) and Morris cross country runner Joy Dudley (44).

JHN: What was it like to serve 25 straight points?

Dunne: It was incredible. I mean, I still don’t even feel like I really did it. The weird thing is that it wasn’t the first time I had done it. I did it in like fifth or sixth grade when I was at Nettle Creek Junior High. But that was doing underhand serves, so this was a lot different. This came in a regional game, too, so it was just amazing.

JHN: Do you work on your serves a lot?

Dunne: Yeah. Our coach [Scott Howell] tells us all the time that serves are one of the most important parts of the game. If you miss a serve, you are just giving the other team a point. So, we have a drill in practice where we have to serve 10 serves in a row inbounds, and if you miss, the count goes back to zero. That really helps us focus on getting the ball inbounds, and it helped me in that game when I was getting tired.

JHN: How did your season go overall?

Dunne: It was great. We struggled a little bit last year, but this year it was a completely different mindset. I had played with the seniors and some of the juniors for a long time, and we just all got along really well. I couldn’t be more grateful for my teammates. I love them all so much.

JHN: Your team got along well?

Dunne: We really did. We did a lot of team-bonding things. We would go over to each others’ houses for dinners, stuff like that. My family has a lake house in Essex, and we all went water skiing. Even though we don’t all hang out together outside of volleyball, it felt like we did. That translated to the court, because we all knew we had each others’ backs.

JHN: Are you going to play volleyball in college?

Dunne: I am not sure. I want to go into the medical field, so I don’t know if volleyball might be too much along with the studying.