‘Family’ carried to Hall’s 2005 volleyball team to state trophy

When asked to describe his 2005 Hall High School state volleyball team, coach Demi Salazar needed just one word.

“Family,” he said.

And then he added, “They just played like family.”

That family-like atmosphere led the Red Devils to a fourth-place state finish, which remains as the only female team from Hall to win a trophy at state.

The Hall state squad was one of nine honorees from the class of 2020 and 2021 to be inducted into the Hall High School Athletic Hall of Fame Saturday afternoon.

Salazar’s message to his team in 2005 was simple:

“I told them, ‘You can get what you want, but you have to learn every night and keep getting better and better and you can’t be afraid,’” he said. “I think if you felt like you’re playing with family, you’re not afraid. In the eyes of your family, you don’t change.”

The Hall team was focused on making history - they kept pointing to the wall of fame board in the old Red Devil Gymnasium that showcased all the Hall teams to have placed at state in the shape of the state of Illinois.

“They had to put the ‘Illinois’ up,” Salazar said. “In your articles you guys wrote, it said, ‘We finally got our state.’

“They were driven. They were definitely driven girls.”

Salazar said the Red Devils’ best game was the Princeton game in the sectional semifinals, which they beat their NCIC rivals coached by former Hall coach, Andy Puck, 25-21, 23-25, 25-16.

From there, the Red Devils weren’t supposed to win again. But nobody told them.

They took down a Flanagan squad, which had not lost to an Illinois team in 33 matches, for the sectional title, 25-17, 25-21. Flanagan would gain some revenge by beating largely the same group of Hall girls in the state basketball quarterfinals.

Then Hall had a big mountain to climb, mighty Lemont Mt. Assisi Academy, in the supersectional match at Seneca. To make the assignment all that much harder, all-stater Kailey Klein went down in practice the night before and was hobbling around.

“So we’re in the supersectional and the girls were a bit little concerned, ‘Is she (Klein) going to be OK?’ I told them, ‘We’ve got nothing to be worried about ladies. Just play your game.’”

The girls had reason to be concerned. Mt. Assisi was the Chicago Catholic School champion, they just played Mother McCauley three close games, and they didn’t know if Klein was going to be up to her old self.

“We warmed up a little bit slower than we normally did and I could tell Kailey was a little bit (hobbled),” Salazar said. “Then Mt. Assisi brought in 300 nuns and priests and the girls were all looking at me. I told them, ‘That was kind of our back-up plan, we’re just going to pray.’ So then they just laughed and we were OK.”

Hall got down big in the first game and went down in defeat 25-17. Salazar switched up Klein on Mt. Assisi’s big hitter, reducing her kills, and went on to take the next two sets, 25-19, 25-22.

After the match, Salazar remembers the Mt. Assisi coach saying, “We didn’t expect to lose that game.”

It was off to Class 1A state (two classes), where Hall was joined at Redbird Arena by county neighbor Bureau Valley in Normal.

In the state quarterfinals, Hall faced Jacksonville Routt, winners of the Riverton supersectional. Routt’s coach Patrick Gibson wore shorts for the match, looking “like they may have pulled a dad down from the stands,” Salazar joked.

“We were both animated people and that game was super animated,” said Salazar, who came back for a second stint at Hall and came back out of retirement again this year to help his future daughter-in-law, Amanda Foote, coach junior high volleyball at JFK.

“We were kind of joking back and forth, because he’d say something to his team that would be pretty much the same thing I’d say in the same situation.”

Hall won the first game, 25-19, but Routt flipped the scores to take the second game. Routt led 20-18 in the third set, but Salazar had the Red Devils do something they rarely did - use a tip by Klein - to tie the game at 20.

Kara Decker’s hit sent Hall to a 24-23 lead and Klein blasted a kill for match point at 25-23. Hall advanced to the semifinals, guaranteeing they’d bring a trophy home, something three state teams from the mid-90s were unable to do.

“I think it was Kailey Klein that said, ‘We got our Illinois,’” Salazar said, of the Hall gym wall of fame.

Hall lost to Columbia in the state semifinals, 25-11, 25-12, the same team that had knocked out Bureau Valley in the quarterfinals, 25-23, 25-16.

The Red Devils lost to Hartsburg-Emden in the third-place match, finishing fourth.

It was an unique state tournament field which saw two teams from the same conference (Cahokia), Breese Central and Columbia, finish first and second, and two others from the same county, Hall and Bureau Valley. Normally, Salazar pointed out, in those kind of situations their paths would cross sooner and one would knock the other out.

Other inductees honored Saturday were cross country/track standouts and BCR Runners of the Year, Scott Janusick and Liz (Mosbach) Stanford, football/track standout Jason Bland, football all-stater Bill McAdams, state high jump champ Matt Hassler, friends of Hall Doug and Teresa Colmone, and popular coach Lou Zecca.