Vickers, Plainfield N. win 13th straight

Plainfield North's Brett Gunderesen returns a serve against Minooka.
(Larry Kane/For the Herald News)

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When experts in the boys volleyball world started pointing to the Neuqua Valley Regional, many arrived at the same conclusion.

The regional final would be a rematch: Minooka vs. Neuqua Valley. The Indians handed the sixth-ranked Wildcats one of their three losses during a regular-season tournament not long ago.

Plainfield North’s Derek Vickers took a quick spin through one of the preview articles and thought to himself, “Wait a minute.”

“Before the match, we looked in the paper and saw that Minooka was scheduled to play Neuqua — even before they played us. They said it was going to be a rematch. We looked at that like, ‘Come on, what are you doing?’ That was like a challenge for us. We had to overcome that kind of talk.”

Vickers, a senior outside hitter and co-captain, did his part in North’s 29-27, 25-22 victory over Minooka in a tense semifinal matchup on Tuesday night at Neuqua Valley. He registered 12 digs and five kills for the Tigers, including a kill to end the match that followed after Dan Taggart’s pass and Eric Scheblein’s set.

“Well, the pass was perfect; the set was perfect,” Vickers said. “I can’t give enough credit to our libero (Taggart) and our two setters (Scheblein and Josh DeJong). They played out of their minds. They were awesome. Anyway, I saw the set, and I knew I could take a line. Most guys usually will give you the line. They put a great block up.

“But it just went down. It was kind of like the luck of the draw — a 50-50 ball. They got a piece of the ball. They definitely touched it. But it was a great feeling when I saw it drop on the other side of the net.”

The victory for North (25-6) was its 13th in a row and came in the rubber match between the Tigers and Minooka. The two teams split during the regular season on their way to gaining a piece of the Southwest Prairie Conference championship. North moves on to face Neuqua Valley at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The Wildcats (33-3) beat Plainfield South 25-13, 25-22 in the first match behind the hitting of Rob Bauer. He finished with a team-high 14 kills.

“Ever since about two months ago, we’ve always been the underdog,” North coach Kevin Vesper said. “And we love it — absolutely love it. Other teams outside the conference see Plainfield North and they go, ‘Cakewalk. No problem.’ We take that kind of talk and use it as a chip on our shoulder. We want to show them we’re something to reckon with — you better be careful when you face Plainfield North. My boys are full of confidence right now, which is a great thing to have.”

The Tigers’ roar was best typified in the area of serve-receive.

Minooka’s Ryne Jacobson and Robbie Brannick were blasting top-spin jump serves at North’s receiving team almost all night. Rare was the occasion that the Tigers were unable to come up a pass to start their own counter attack.

“In the very beginning of the season, serve-receive is one of things I told my boys we have to be very good at,” Vesper said. “If this same match happened two months ago, we would have been served out of the gym, no doubt. My boys obviously have improved in that area, and to show it against a quality team like Minooka says a lot about this team.”

The Tigers built leads of 8-3, 15-9 and 24-20 in Game 1.

Minooka (15-4) fought back to tie 24-24 on a slide kill by sophomore middle hitter Kevin Hannon. Then, after an even exchange, the Indians went ahead 26-25 on a back corner kill by junior outside hitter Matt Phillips.

Vickers followed with a kill to knot the score 26-26. The Tigers went ahead 28-27 moments later on a Minooka service error and eventually wrapped up the game on Jeremy DeWeerdt’s kill. His winner came on North’s seventh game point. ,p>“We’re excited,” DeWeerdt said. “We’re going to be playing for the regional championship now, It’s the first thing our school’s ever done in this sport. Guy’s volleyball has not been strong. So, it’s really exciting to be the first team to get into a regional final. The girls have been good. My sister (Amber) played on some great teams. It’s nice to catch up a little bit with her.

“With Minooka, it was just a best-out-three situation. We knew we really had to bring it. We knew they underestimated us the second time we played them.”

DeWeerdt finished with 11 kills. Sophomore Jack Krieger had 14 blocks and four kills. Brett Gundersen had nine kills, nine digs and eight blocks. Scheblein finished with 13 assists and nine digs. Taggart added 11 digs. Marc Wolinski had eight blocks and DeJong chipped in 10 assists and four kills.

“We expected them to want revenge and we knew it was going to be a tough battle, a lot tougher than the second time we played them,” Gundersen said. “We beat them at their place. We knew they wanted to wipe out that memory. Our serve-receive was really big. That’s a crucial part of our game so we can run our offense inside out and score points of our own. If our serve-receive is bad, we probably would have lost.”

In Game 2, Minooka led 10-7 following a kill shot by Phillips. North tied the score 11-11 on DeWeerdt’s tip. The two teams battled back-and-forth through six more deadlocks, the last coming at 22-22. Scheblein’s set led to a kill by Vickers that put the Tigers on top 23-22. And they closed out the match on a hitting error by Minooka and another kill by Vickers.

“We didn’t play as well as we could have,” Minooka coach Janel Grzetich said. “They played well. We should have played better. That was it. We made too many errors.”

Senior middle hitter and captain Ben Simmering had six kills and two blocks in Plainfield South’s loss to Neuqua. Cody Langlois had 5 kills and three blocks. Tim Waldvogel chipped in two kills and two blocks.

The Cougars (11-19) built early leads in both games before the Wildcats turned the tide.

“In Game 1, we came out early and we played very well,” South coach Bob Majka said. “But, then, we didn’t capitalize. We made some mistakes. But the boys didn’t give up. In Game 2, we made them work. That’s the most we’ve gone against them in a long time. ,p>“I give my guys great props. I thought we even had a great chance to take the second game there at 24-22. It’s just they had more weapons to do damage to us than we did. We had a couple of rotations where we got in trouble. We just need to get through those.

“My seniors — Ben Simmering, Tim Waldvogel, Cody Langlois and Anthony Sutliff — played the game’s of their lives. It was very nice to see them end that way.”