Girls volleyball: Glenbard West rallies to keep season alive with three-set win against Metea Valley

ST. CHARLES – Glenbard West setter Cara Herbert has only glowing things to say about teammate Breccan Scheck.

That’s understandable considering Scheck, a senior middle hitter, and the Hilltoppers in general, have been on fire this season.

“Breccan has been huge,” Herbert said. “I feel like she’s just a beast at the net and on and off the court, she’s a great person.

“When she’s in the game, I think she has the mentality that she wants everything and she just goes for it. She’s worked so hard to come to this moment and I think it’s really paid off.”

It certainly did on Monday. Scheck was dominant at the net, finishing with eight kills and three blocks as second-seeded Glenbard West rallied to beat third-seeded Metea Valley 22-25, 25-18, 25-21 at the Class 4A St. Charles North Sectional semifinals.

The Hilltoppers (35-3) advance to play top-seeded Benet (36-2), which eliminated fourth-seeded Wheaton Warrenville South 25-15, 25-23, in the sectional final at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

“I think it’s really exciting for us because in the last three years we haven’t gotten this far,” Scheck said. “This is where we’ve gone down, but I think we all have energy now.

“We’re ready to do something – make history here.”

Scheck and her teammates made the Mustangs (28-9) miserable at the end with solid blocking. The Hilltoppers scored 10 points off blocks, with Herbert, who had 31 assists, getting four of them, often teaming with Scheck to put up a brick wall.

“The first set that’s something we struggled with, so our coaches made sure to focus on that during our timeouts and in between each set,” Scheck said. “So we worked on with our right sides the timing of our block and once we got that down, we were pretty good at shutting them down.”

The Hilltoppers never trailed in the second set, but it was tied at 13 before a Metea serving error gave Glenbard West the lead back. Scheck followed with back-to-back blocks and followed that with a kill two points later as the Mustangs could get no closer than three points the rest of the set.

But Metea bounced back in the third set and were 10 points from victory with a 15-11 lead.

Marin Johnson answered with a kill and libero Penelope Vilkama followed with three service points, including two aces, to tie it 15.

The Mustangs got kills from Olivia Stewart and Maddie Hopkins to go up 17-16 but two Metea errors evened the score again and Ivy Toth’s block put Glenbard West ahead. Ashley Ward’s kill pulled Metea into an 18-18 tie, but Toth had two kills down the stretch, including one that triggered a closing 4-1 run.

“We executed our game plan, but they got us out of system a little bit towards the end of the second and in that third, and we just couldn’t get back on track,” Metea Valley coach Dave Macdonald said. “That’s why they’re one of the top teams in the state.

“I feel that hopefully we gained some respect from this match. I felt like all season long, no one really thought of us as a top team, but that’s all that I could ask from this group is the fight that they had.”

Avery Herbert led the Glenbard West attack with 11 kills, while Johnson added eight and Toth had four. Hopkins pounded 13 kills and Camille Morrison 12 for Metea, which also got 36 assists from setter Katie Schuele.

In the other semifinal, Benet got eight kills from Lynney Tarnow to extend its winning streak to 17. WW South (23-14) led 22-15 in the second set but could not hold on despite eight kills from Lauren Coyne and 18 assists from Rebecca Bellows.