The Lockport and Stagg volleyball teams were very familiar with each other, having played four times this season before Thursday’s meeting.
And No. 2 Lockport (34-5) continued its dominance with a 15-9, 15-10 victory over the third-ranked Chargers (33-6) in the Class AA Andrew sectional final.
“At the end of the season, everything is up for grabs,” said Lockport coach Julia Hudson, whose team will play defending state champion and current No. 1 Downers Grove South Saturday in the Naperville North supersectional. “It’s whoever plays well that night. If we played tomorrow night, it might be Stagg. We got hot and they weren’t. I’m not saying that we are a better team because we were 4-1 against them. You look at the scores. We got hot tonight.”
The Porters played one of their best matches in a clutch situation. Lockport was dominant at the net despite the effort of the powerful Stagg combination of Jenelle Hart and Janet Golen. Senior middle hitter Leslie Przekwas had nine blocks and four kills while teammate Stephanie Jackson had five blocks and 12 kills. Junior Gina Caneva had four kills and two blocks in the second game.
Stagg fell behind early in both games, trailing 5-1 in the first and 7-0 in the second. In the first game, they never got closer than 12-7. They climbed back to 13-8 in the second but hurt themselves with several unforced errors.
“I could tell they were frustrated,” Jackson said. “They started having hitting errors and having problems. I really don’t know what they were feeling.
“We were feeling we had to come out and play well, with a vengeance. It’s been a tough road but I think it will pay off if we get to the state tournament.”
Stagg had its moments but not enough of them. Hart had 12 kills and Golen nine but Lockport owned the front row. The Chargers could never put together a run of more than three points and often killed potential rallies with unforced errors.
Chargers coach Mary Weitz wasn’t so sure the past didn’t have something to do with the outcome.
“It looked almost like . . . I don’t want to say fate, I want a better word than fate,” Weitz said. “Maybe we were trying on the outside to cover up that we had nerves. We talked all week about how it came down to execution and we did not execute tonight. You can’t win championships without defense and we had no defense tonight.”
Lockport’s offense, keyed by setter Meg Ward’s 23 assists, was too much to overcome. Just like it was in four of the five meetings between the two teams.
“We just played game by game,” Przekwas said. “We played them like it was the first game.”
