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ST. CHARLES – Brady Rasso never lost faith.
Rasso, St. Charles North’s senior middle hitter, found the motivation to help propel the North Stars to a 25-22, 25-23 win against St. Charles East on May 3.
The North Stars (6-19, 1-4) trailed 17-11 and 23-19 in the second set, but found a way to grind through both deficits and beat the Saints for the second time this season.
It was the North Stars’ first DuKane Conference win of the season.
“I know we’re having a pretty down year. Obviously the record doesn’t show how we want to be,” Rasso said. “We play a very hard and tough schedule, so the fact we can put two collectively good sets together shows a lot about our group. Our coach [Todd Weimer] talked about it: We’re very tenacious and we show a lot of grit when sometimes it’s not there. I think we put it all together tonight.
“I’m up at the net telling these guys we’re going to pull this out and we’ve got this. We’ve got to put a lot of trust in each other to obviously get the job done and that’s what we were able to do in the second set.”
Rasso, who had five kills, embraces his leadership role.
“I have the role of a captain. Whether it’s there or not, I think the job needs to be there to not only calm people down and let people know when they do a good job, but I’m there to keep everyone together and keep everyone collected to keep fighting. That’s the overall goal,” Rasso said.
“We want to put 25 points up on the board every night. Somebody has got to be the peace keeper, somebody has got to be the person that’s going to hype everybody up and I want that to be me. I want to embrace the role and I want to continue to keep doing it. It brings the whole team together and you’ve got to have six guys on the court that want to be out there to win.”
Trailing 23-19 in the second set, the North Stars found momentum with strong play at the net and Saints attack errors. A Rasso block was sandwiched between two attack errors before John Jakaitis’ kill tied it at 23.
Ethan Brain had a block before Rasso’s finish at the net completed the impressive comeback to stun St. Charles East (5-19, 0-5).
“Just really proud of the boys,” Weimer said. “We’ve been struggling all season and we’ve been in a lot of our matches, but we just stop playing 15-15, 18-18 and the other team just kind of takes it away. We even talked about playing Glenbard East last week and it was 19-17, called timeout and they scored the last six points to beat us 25-17. We’ve been in that position.
“We talked the mental game tonight quite a bit. We’ve already played these guys at a tournament [and] beat them in two [sets]. We knew it was going to be a tough match for us coming in with both looking for our first [DuKane] Conference win. It’s on their home court. … We had a lot of obstacles and challenges tonight. Just really proud of the boys.”
North Stars freshman libero Joey Stablein was crucial in the comeback, standing tall at the service line.
“He’s a dog,” Rasso said. “I can’t say anything less than that. I mean, he [helps score] the last seven points from the service line. It takes a lot of guts to do that. I mean, whether you’re a freshman or a senior, there’s a lot of pressure riding on him because he misses a serve, momentum swings. You just don’t know, so he’s an incredible player. He shows great tenacity and extreme maturity out there. It’s just an absolute pleasure to have him out there.”
The Saints had a learning opportunity in falling short of forcing a third set despite a pair of sizable leads.
“I think it’s just a matter of being consistent in an emotional match,” Saints coach Kate McCullagh said. “You’re playing North. It’s bound to be more than just the game. I think once the momentum shifts, it’s easy to rattle off a few points and I think that’s what happened at that point.”