Net gains a result of spy games

Plainfield North's Derek Vickers (left) hits the ball off of the block of Plainfield Central's Zach Brown.
(John Patsch/Herald News)

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PLAINFIELD — Brett Gundersen has been playing volleyball long enough now to know most of the tricks of his trade.

For instance, he often sneaks a peek on the other side of the net during warmups. He makes mental notes of how his opponents are setting up for their attacks.

And then he puts that information to work for him in matches.

Gundersen’s spy tactics led to a dominating performance in Plainfield North’s 25-13, 25-17 high school boys volleyball victory over rival Plainfield Central on Tuesday night. He connected for 10 kills and seven blocks as the Tigers (13-3, 3-1) roared out of the starting blocks in the Southwest Prairie Conference matchup and went on to sweep past the Wildcats despite coming down from that initial high in Game 2.

“Yeah, I like to watch their middles warming up,” Gundersen said. “Every player has different hitting techniques. I noticed with one of their middles — he was crossing over his body a lot. So, I made a mental note to set up my block a little further over than I usually would. That seemed to work.

“You’re always looking to prepare yourself the best you can for the game.”

Gundersen served a string of seven straight points as North bolted to a 13-3 lead. Jeremy DeWeerdt had two kills in the spree, one off a block. Gundersen’s back-corner kill shot later pushed the margin to 24-13. And the Tigers took the first game seconds later on a Central hitting error.

DeWeerdt went on to equal Gundersen’s match-high total of 10 kills. Dan Taggart added 11 digs. Josh DeJong had 10 assists. Eric Scheblein chipped in eight digs. C.J. Justinico had four assists and two aces.

“We really pulled it all together in that first game,” DeWeerdt said. “The passes were there. The sets were there. Everything was going great. I think some of that came from looking at what they had in warmups. We can see things — like where to attack. ‘Go across. Go sharp. Go line.’ You do the same kinds of things as always, but you’re looking for what might work in a given situation.

“When we’re just passing, we’ve got time to spare. So, you might as well watch.”

In Game 2, the two teams battled to a 10-10 draw before North took advantage of a four straight Central errors and a kill by Gundersen to open a 15-10 margin. The Tigers stretched their lead to 22-17 on a kill by Jack Krieger and then closed out the match on a string of three straight service points by Justinico, two of them aces.

“We talked as a team and actually we think we had a lot of errors in both games,” North coach Kevin Vesper said. “We’re happy with the win. But we felt we could have played better volleyball, more mistake-free volleyball. In Game 1, Central scored 13 points and we had 10 errors, so we were not happy about that.”

Vesper was happy to see Gundersen and DeWeerdt using their heads to overcome some of the Tigers’ glitches. DeWeerdt has been around the game his whole life. His older sister, Amber, played on the girls volleyball team at North before graduating in May of 2008. In the fall, she made a seamless transition to playing in the collegiate ranks at Toledo.

“Jeremy’s a great learner of the game; he definitely studies,” Vesper said. “And that’s exactly what I do during warmups. If you see, I’m watching them hit. Warmups are warmups. It’s totally different on the floor. But you can learn a little bit. And, I can tell with Jeremy he looks at the way the blockers block. And he’s constantly checking the blockers to get a feel for where he wants to hit the ball.”

DeWeerdt’s mantra: There is always room for improvement.

“We had a big loss to Oswego last week in our conference,” Vesper said. “I told them after that loss, if you want to win conference, we’ve got to win out from this point forward. And it starts right here with Central. I told them, ‘You left a good statement.’ But I warned them, ‘If you want to win conference, you cannot have this many mistakes in a match.’ We’re going to be stressing mistake-free volleyball in practices from now on.”

Chris Cuisia, Tim Eischen and Zach Brown were the top three attackers for Central (2-8, 1-4). All three had two kills. Eischen and Alvin Ramos each had five blocks. Kevin Smith added 21 serve-receives and nine digs. Gil Tovar finished with 22 assists.

“North has a great team,” Central coach Bobby Richardson said. “They have a lot of talented kids. We have a lot of talent, too. But, just for some reason tonight, we came out on our heels and really didn’t start picking it up until Game 2, which was unfortunate.

“We’ve been trying to mix some things up and get a group together that is working well. So, we’re kind of still in the building stage. We’re having trouble having the guys keep their heads in the game, kind of shaking off the bad points. But we’re still working on it. The hardest thing is knowing how much potential they have and then just watching them fall apart like that.”