Opening-night jitters

Pictured from left to right: Miguel Calvillo (Naperville North), Victor Lei (Naperville Central), Ryan Kristensen (North) and Dan Dierking (Central) signed National Letters of Intent to play college volleyball for coach Bill Gleeson (far right) at St. Ambrose University. Dierking, a 6-foot-5-inch outside hitter, was named by the Chicago Sun-Times as one of Illinois' top 50 boys volleyball players. Submitted photo

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AURORA -- Waubonsie Valley boys volleyball coach Alan Lagger knew his Warriors would come out with some first-game jitters in Monday's lid-lifter against West Aurora.

But once the Warriors escaped Game 1 with a 28-26 win, they settled in for a dominant, 25-12 win in Game 2 to open the season with a victory.

"We kind of expected that we would struggle in the first game," Lagger said. "There were a lot of nerves starting out. The second game was more indicative of how we can play. I knew once we got to the sideline (after Game 1) and I told them they got the bad play out of the way that they would come out and play well in the second."

Game 1 was a battle of attrition at the end. Neither team could get much going, with errors accounting for seven of the last nine points overall. Eventually, Waubonsie junior Connor Dougherty broke through with one of his match-high nine kills to propel the Warriors to the win.

"We needed a player to step up," said first-year West coach Tolis Koskinaris, who was coaching against his former high school coach at Waubonsie in Lagger. "Everybody was looking around at each other. But it was better than I thought it was going to be. It wasn't that bad of a way to start the season."

The Warriors' deep, versatile front line started to exert their will in Game 2. After an error to start the game, Dougherty powered down a block to get things rolling. West managed to cut it to 11-7 on a T.J. Schwerdtfeger kill, but Waubonsie took over from there.

From that point on, Waubonsie went on a 13-2 run to put the match away. And it was not just Dougherty (nine kills, five blocks) doing the damage, though he did have three kills and two blocks in the run. Russell Penacook (six kills) added two kills and an ace, Josh Ghassan (six kills) had two kills and Traeger Penacook (seven kills) added a kill.

"It took us a game to warm up, basically," Dougherty said. "I think we have a better team than we showed in Game 2, because we've shown in practice that we can play better than that. But it was a good start. Even with a young team, we showed that we can get a win."