Wildcats make it look simple

Neuqua Valley's Rob Bauer (right) spikes the ball over O'Fallon's Dan Schachner during Tuesday's sectional championship match in Bolingbrook.
(Jon Cunningham/For The Sun)

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The way Neuqua Valley right-side hitter Grant Hedrick explained it, volleyball is very simple because everything depends on the passing.

The Wildcats (36-3) passed almost flawlessly on Tuesday in winning the Bolingbrook Sectional Championship for the third straight year 25-10, 25-11 over O'Fallon, which made a four-and-a-half hour trip from downstate for the match.

"You get your pass, you get your set and you're going to hit the ball," Hedrick said. "Our passing has been close to perfect for our last three matches. Our team has played close to its best volleyball throughout the regional and sectional."

"We passed really well and that allowed us to run our offense," Neuqua Valley coach Erich Mendoza said. "We ran tandems off the serve-receive and off the free balls. It was just an excellent game all the way around."

The Wildcats, who finished third in state last year, advance to Friday's state tournament's Elite Eight match Friday against two-time defending state champion Wheaton Warrenville South.

O'Fallon (23-6), a team working at a disadvantage in both height and experience, saw the Wildcats build a 10-5 Game 1 lead off a pair of powerful Rob Bauer kills early in the game.

"When Rob put the ball straight down early, everyone got fired up," Neuqua middle hitter Andrew Stirk said.

Neuqua soon scored six straight points to make it 16-6, and then the Wildcats cruised the rest of the way.

Bauer had eight of his game-high 11 kills in that first game.

After the relatively easy Game 1, it would have been understandable for Neuqua to suffer a letdown in Game 2, but the Panthers weren't so lucky.

"We just wanted to stay motivated and keep our momentum going tonight so that it carries over into the state tournament," Stirk said. "If we let down today, we would still be down on Friday. Today, everyone got good hits and put the ball down."

The Wildcats never trailed and were never even tied in Game 2 as everybody got into the act.

Tim Brackett finished the match with eight kills, Kevin Begley led the diggers with 13 and Alex Onsager set for 27 assists.

"Sometimes when you play a match like that you let your guard down and get lazy," Mendoza said. "Mentally, we were really focused tonight. It didn't matter who was on the other side of the net. We were going to go out there and play our game."

O'Fallon coach Tim Gagen was impressed by the Wildcats performance.

"We ran into one of the top teams in the state," Gagen said. "We can't replicate that with downstate volleyball. We just ran into a buzzsaw. Once the snowball started rolling downhill, it just kept going. They're a very, very, very good team and I wish them the best of luck and hope they win it all."

Michael Sasiela was the kill leader for the Panthers with three.