Massoni sets table for Naperville North

Updated: April 22, 2011 2:04PM

Naperville North continues to prove there's a lot more to its volleyball attack than all-state candidate Shane Witmer.

On Thursday, Huskies setter Steve Massoni utilized all the team's weapons to top crosstown rival and visitor Naperville Central 25-18, 25-20 in DuPage Valley Conference action.

"We wanted to show them that this isn't just the Shane Witmer show, even though that's a great show," said Naperville North coach Nate Bornancin. "Steve did a fine job of spreading the ball around. We found our middles well. And we moved our block around so our hitters did a great job of finishing with one-on-one blocks."

While Witmer was the kill leader with six, those middles came through with some big plays - Ryan Loughlin had five kills and Tony Leon registered three. Also coming up big in the balanced Huskies attack were Henry Cheatham with five kills and Adam Souhrada with four.

Massoni distributed 23 assists and Danny Boryca came up with 12 digs.

Both games were very close early on, featuring several ties and lead changes.

In the first game, the Huskies (11-4, 3-1) capitalized on numerous Redhawks errors to get some separation, and pulled ahead 17-10 after being tied at 9-9.

In Game 2, it was the Huskies offense that was responsible for the surge.

After the Redhawks (5-10, 0-4) tied it at 10-10 on a Joe Frantik kill, the Huskies scored five of the next six points.

Naperville Central almost caught them at 16-15, but Witmer's three kills and an ace down the stretch sealed the victory.

"We came out fired up and we got our kills when we needed them," said Boryca. "In the second game we limited our errors. We blocked very well and played good defense."

The Huskies were pumped up after suffering a two-game loss to Wheaton Warrenville South on Tuesday.

"We felt we could play much better than that and we showed that today," said Bornancin. "We had to bring our A game to win. We drilled a lot yesterday on making the serve the first line of our defense and it showed in our serving today."

Zach Madsen led the Redhawks with six kills, followed closely by Connor Cunningham and Sarvesh Somisetty with five apiece. Nirmal Desai had 10 digs and Albert Lei had 32 assists.

"We have to keep in mind that this is still a work in progress," said Naperville Central coach Jeff Danbom about his inexperienced team. "We have to work on minimizing our errors both at the service line and attacking. Errors are keeping us out of games that we could be making a lot closer. North did a nice job tonight."

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