NEW LENOX -- Providence Catholic High School's boys volleyball team demonstrated another quality of why it's the state's top-ranked squad in Wednesday's match against Lincoln-Way East.
The unbeaten Celtics have caused plenty of headaches with their balanced hitting attack and fine defense, but as the Griffins found out the hard way, they're also able to serve quite effectively.
Highlighted by 6 aces during the second game, Providence's serving was the difference in its 25-17, 25-21 nonconference win over East, which was the squad's 18-straight triumph.
"We served very well today," Celtics coach Cindy Olczyk said. "We've been working on it all season and we're trying to be more consistent with it. They saw how well it helped them in game 1 and then really focused on it in game 2.
"This performance shows us that we're making the progress that we want to make. We worked on some new things in the last two matches and it's helped. They see that it's working and now we're going to try to take another step."
Ace serves by Hayden Grove (7 kills) and Chase Pavlick (3 kills) helped the Celtics grab a quick 6-2 lead in the second game against the Griffins (13-13).
But it was the 3 aces served up by Eric Daliege (6 kills) a short time later that sparked a 7-point run which gave the hosts a convincing 13-3 advantage.
"We really did well on our serving today," Daliege said. "We've been missing a lot of serves during the season but we did a good job of being aggressive and getting them in.
"This was good competition for us, and we came out strong and did a good job. We're coming together as a team and progressing really well by fixing small details of our game."
Thanks to an ace by Jonathan Gustafson (22 assists) and a kill from Denny Falls (6 kills), Providence managed to build up a 16-4 lead before Olczyk began to clear the bench.
East still trailed 22-10 in the late going but managed to make things look respectable by scoring 11 of the final 14 points, thanks in part to three kills from Nick Janky (4 kills).
It got as close as 24-21 following back-to-back kills by reserve George Langheld (3 blocks, 3 kills) before Dan Ruzich (3 kills) finally ended the drama with a kill for the final point.
"They served very well today and took us out of our serve-receive, and our serve-receive is usually one of our strongest attributes as a team," Griffins coach Dawn Murphy said. "Their serving was both consistent and aggressive.
"They're a good team so when you play them, you can't afford to make the mistakes we did. We didn't pick up balls off of deflections and also made hitting errors. That's not a good combination against the state's number one team."
Things were much more competitive in the opening game, despite the fact that the Celtics used consecutive kills from Grove to build up an early 10-5 advantage.
The Griffins relied on the play of Mike McKenzie (7 kills) and Dan Hunt (16 assists) to stay close but Providence used an ace from Ruzich to highlight a 5-0 run that put it up 21-14.
"We were pretty fired up for this match and you can't stop us when we're all intense and really pumped up," Grove said. "We've been practicing our serving a lot and trying to get them in, and when we get them in, it helps a lot.
"Every day in practice and in every game we just keep getting better and we're just really coming together as a team now. We're all really good friends and it helps a lot to have good friends since it's making us into a better team."
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