NEW LENOX -- Teacher beats pupil. Captain steers comeback ship.
Take your pick.
Both storylines work to explain how the Lincoln-Way Central High School boys volleyball team rallied for a three-game victory over Joliet Township in a match pitting Knights coach Joann Holverson vs. her former student teaching assistant, Jason Herrmann, on Thursday night.
The Knights were knocked on their heels in the early going of the SouthWest Suburban Conference crossover by the speed and the power of JT's offense. They dropped a game before adjusting to the tempo and devising a plan to derail JT's locomotive train, middle hitter Corey Frain.
"They're a good team," Lincoln-Way Central senior captain Brian Thorp said after the Knights battled back to win 22-25, 25-14, 25-12. "They came out fired up. They've got good hitters.
"For us, it's all about the passing. Once we got the passes down, we started running our offense a little bit. And, in the second and third games, we just served them out of their offense. They couldn't get the passes to run their middles or run what they wanted to do.
"So, it was all about serving for us today. The strategy was to go short and deep on them, and keep their middle out of the offense. The short serve was taking their middle away from them, and he's the one that killed us in that first game. He's a good player."
Frain, a 6-foot-5 senior middle hitter who is headed to Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne, had six of his match-high 13 kills in the first game as JT jumped to leads of 7-3 and 18-14. The Steelmen eventually closed out the game on a net violation by the Knights. Frain also totaled six blocks.
The strategy to take the ball out of his hands was devised by Holverson and executed by Thorp -- and others.
The Knights' 6-1 setter dished out 20 assists and had nine digs and four kills in a show of his all-around ability. Corey Bingham added nine digs and seven kills. James Cummins served seven aces -- most of them on lob shots falling in front of JT's serve-receive line. He also finished with five kills.
Andy Wingate added five kills and four blocks for the Knights (12-5, 4-1). Bobby Brodinski chipped in six digs.
"I think in the first game we didn't serve-receive as well as we are capable of," Holverson said. "That's one of the things we said during the timeout: 'If you pass the ball and allow us to run our offense, we'll take over.' To be honest, we just got off to a slow start. And I think it was because we hadn't played in a while. We had a match Tuesday, but it wasn't at this speed or at this tempo. So, they were taken on their heels.
"Hat's off to Joliet -- they are much, much improved from last season, even some of the boys that play club ball. So, there's been a lot of improvement there, and I think we just had to adjust to the speed. I think we did that in the second half of that first game. But it was a little too late.
"But, by the second game, we were able to make some adjustments. They worked. And we stuck with that game plan for that third game."
The Knights' plan revolved around serving to a spot on the floor.
"We've been working very hard on serving strategically, not necessarily always trying to serve the ball as hard as we can, but trying to serve the ball in spots that will disrupt our opponent's offense, to take some of their stronger hitters out of the match," Holverson said. "Frain's an awesome hitter. I think every time he did get a hold of it he put it down.
"But my servers, I thought, did a great job of hitting the zones and doing the things we asked them to do."
With Frain handcuffed by Central's zone serving, JT (9-2, 1-2) turned to its junior red-headed twins, Dylan and Greg Frederick, on the outside for firepower. Greg finished with seven kills. Dylan had five kills and five digs. Adam Hucek added 20 assists and Alex Aguirre 10 digs.
"We came out and executed our game plan in the first game," Herrmann said. "We serve-received. We were passing great. We were running our offense real well. At one point, we were up 20-16. Then, we win 25-22. I'm thinking, 'Hey, we're continuing with what we did on Tuesday night against East (JT beat Lincoln-Way East 25-20, 25-19 in its home-opener).
"Then, in that second game, there were a couple of close calls, calls that didn't go our way. And then it was like we broke down, similar to the match we had against Minooka where we went three and similar to our only other loss against Andrew. We had a mental breakdown. And, like anything, most of the game is mental.
"We've got the physical part down. Our boys are strong. They're athletes. It's the mental part of the game that's the struggle for, I think, all teams. We gave it to them on a platter. We said, 'Here you go, Central, take the game.' Right now, I've got no answer for it."
Herrmann coached under Holverson during his student teaching days at Sandburg and looked forward to matching wits with his mentor again.
"Joann's a great coach," Herrmann said. "She won state championships with Sandburg, and one of the big reasons I chose that school to go student teach at was to work with her. I'd like to think I took some things from her and added my own flavor to the match. It would have been great to beat her. But I guess I'll have to wait for another time.
"Hopefully, we'll see them down the line, maybe in the (state) tournament."
By then, Herrmann hopes to teach JT to be ready for serving ploys like the one used by Central.
"You know, the way to take the middle out is to serve short," he said. "That's what I told our players. We need to move our serve-receive up. We still stayed back too far. And we didn't execute. It's been a struggle. We've seen that the last couple of matches.
"Obviously, once teams start seeing you've got a big middle, the way to get him out of the match is to serve short and move our serve-receive pattern around and force us to set the outsides. They executed that, and we didn't have an answer for it. That's something we've been working on. In the two losses we have, we didn't execute in the game."
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