Club volleyball: 4 locals help Sky High to 3rd-place finish at national tournament

Tears were shed, but that didn’t stop Sky High Volleyball’s Adidas 18 Black team from enjoying the moment and celebrating its latest accomplishment.

Four local players helped the Crystal Lake-based team to a bronze medal last weekend at the USA Volleyball Girls Junior National Championships in Dallas, closing out their club careers in top form and ending the year as one of the top three teams in the country.

Sky High, which went 61-11 on the season, was seeded fifth entering the tournament and went undefeated in its first seven matches before losing in the semifinals to KC Power (Kansas City), 25-22, 18-25, 15-11.

KC Power went on to win the national title.

Local players for the 18 Black team were Marian Central’s Sydney Nemtuda (Florida Atlantic), Lauren Hanlon (Xavier) and McKayla Wuensch (Nevada), and Huntley’s Ally Dion (Southeast Missouri State).

Mikayla Robinson (South Carolina), the daughter of former Chicago Bears wide receiver Marcus Robinson, and Timber Terrell (Arkansas State) were named to the all-tournament team.

All 10 of the players on 18 Black will play at the collegiate level, including libero Morgan O’Brien (Illinois), Ashley Williams (Bowdoin), McKenna Lahr (Fordham) and Emma Patlovich (New Hampshire).

Sky High has won 11 national championships, as well as five second-place results and 11 third-place finishes with more than 80 All-American or all-tournament selections at the national level.

Adidas 18 Black played in the 18 Open Division, the highest and most competitive division at nationals.

“My expectations knowing my team was that we can win the entire thing,” said Sky High Executive Director and 18 Black coach Scott Harris, who started the club in 1989 along with his wife, Sherry.

“After each win, and when we got through the quarterfinals, we knew we weren’t that far off from a national championship, and we knew we could get it. We had just beaten (KC Power) the day before and we beat them fairly easily. We didn’t play the same against them and different things broke down in that match that cost us.”

Sky High swept KC Power, 25-19, 25-16, earlier in pool play, but KC Power adjusted its strategy to try and phase out Sky High’s middle blockers, Robinson and Terrell. Robinson has a reach of 10 feet, 8 inches, and Terrell has a reach of 10 feet, 2 inches.

KC Power took a 7-1 lead in the third set of the semifinals and Sky High could not recover.

“We knew we could win the whole thing,” said Dion, the 2016 Northwest Herald Volleyball Player of the Year. “We knew we could play with all of the top teams in the country. We weren’t the biggest team or most talented, but we had a lot of heart and drive. It’s an incredible feeling.

“We still played well (against KC Power). We gave it our all, but it didn’t go our way in the end.”

Sky High triple qualified for the national tournament, winning national qualifiers in Chicago and Denver and also qualifying in Indianapolis. Sky High also took second at the Great Lakes 18’s Power League in Aurora.

Despite the loss in the semifinal, the players on Sky High came away with a great sense of pride and accomplishment.

This will be their last time playing together on club.

The nucleus of the 18 Black team has been together for two or three years, Harris said, and some players have been with the club since they were 10 or 11 years old.

Nemtuda said the team really came together this season and showed a sense of maturity, never counting themselves out in any match. In one match this year, they trailed 22-12 in a set and came back all the way to win.

“It was kind of like high school season all over again,” said Nemtuda, who also was on Marian Central’s Class 3A state runner-up in the fall. “The only thing stopping us would be ourselves.

“Third in the nation is better than anything that we could had ever imagined. We ended up happy about it because our club team has never been this good before.

“That we got third was the most amazing feeling to end our club volleyball careers on.”