BEECHER — There were a lot of things for the Westmont High School volleyball club to overcome against Seneca here at the Beecher Class 2A Sectional on Monday night, and they overcame most of them.
Most, but not the Lady Irish themselves.
The Sentinels, at 16-16 a huge underdog to 29-5 Seneca coming into this semifinal, arrived at Beecher right at their game time because halfway to the match smoke started pouring into the bus. Stranded on the side of Interstate 294, several parents and fans stopped to investigate and ended up taking the team there a few players at a time.
But despite that obstacle, Westmont actually won the first set and almost rallied to take the second and third games after Seneca had taken commanding leads. However, the locals rode strong efforts by seniors Grace Alley, Lexi Greve and Gillian Culbreth to hold on for a 23-25, 25-19, 25-21 victory.
Alley and Greve each collected 11 kills and Culbreth notched 13 points in the win, which sends the Irish (30-5) into the sectional final Wednesday at 6 p.m. against Chicago Christian, a 25-16, 25-19 winner over Beecher in the night's second semi.
"Tonight was all about perseverance," said Seneca coach Noah Champene about the difficult see-saw match. "For us, when things weren't going our way, we kinda slowed it down and took it one play at a time, didn't get upset with ourselves, didn't get too low, and that enable us to keep our composure and come back from the first set and play a lot better volleyball in the last two. Our serves became more consistent and Grace just stepped up and took over that second set. She was phenomenal, so were Lexi and Hannah.
"Sure, it would be nice to blow an opponent out, but these tight wins I feel gets you ready for this level of play, and hopefully that will show again on Wednesday."
The first set was a perfect example of how tightly played the match would be. The score was tied at virtually every number from 2 through 23, with Seneca imperfect passing offset by Westmont's serving errors, which gave the Irish five of their last seven points. However, after Molly Baker and Hannah Berg made incredible saves on one point, a miraculous dig returned to the SHS side of the floor by Seleena Zakhem and later a slam by Megan Thompson gave the Sentinels the decision.
The Irish raced out to leads of 9-2 and 15-5 in Game 2 on the serving of Culbreth, Baker and Alley, but Westmont rallied to within four points before a Baker shoot gave Seneca the set.
Set 3 was a replay of the first to an 11-11 tie when a Westmont service error brought Culbreth to the line for what became a match-changing seven-point run, opening up a 19-11 advantage. Still, the Sentinels wouldn't quit and a Rachel Padgitt block tied it again at 21-21. Again, a service miscue gave the ball to Ally and she served up the last three points, the clincher on a Greve blast across court.
"I think we had a good scouting report and we practiced well to prepare for them, so that helped at the start," said Westmont coach Jennifer Gliwa-Bell. "We knew that serving and defense would be critical … and our serving plan went well. Where we struggled mightily was defensively. We did not do a good job of moving our feet and picking up balls that maybe we could have, which would force them to be out of system a little more. To me, that was the biggest issue. Our defense wasn't as tight as we needed it to be and that allowed Seneca to do offensively exactly what we didn't want: get the ball to No. 3 (Alley) and No. 7 (Greve).
"I'm so proud of these girls. We're on the side of the highway with smoke coming out of our bus and they're singing. They are really, really resilient."