Girls volleyball: Haylee Dunne serves 30 straight points, Morris cruises past Thornton

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MORRIS – Haylee Dunne added on to Morris volleyball’s record-setting campaign of 29 wins with a serving performance for the ages Tuesday.

No. 3-seeded Morris led No. 14-rated Thornton 20-10 in semifinal game one of the Class 3A Morris Regional before Dunne stepped to the service line and never left it again for the rest of the match, as Morris celebrated another historic night on its own court with a 25-10, 25-0 thrashing of the Wildcats.

Dunne’s 31 service points including 30 consecutive winners between the first and second sets as well as a whopping 20 aces, with four in game one and an awe-inspiring 16 in game two, establishing her as the fourth all-time individual in the history of the Illinois High School Association for aces in any given match as she ran out the second set with 25 straight points to blank Thornton (9-17).

The state record for aces in a contest is 26 established in 1978 by Sherri Heseman of Nashville.

Oddly, Dunne has accomplished this before, but not in this rarified air of prep volleyball.

“Crazy as it sounds, I have served out 25 before when, I think, I was in fifth grade at Nettle Creek, but that was underhand serves,” Dunne, a junior, said with a laugh. “Tonight was so much different and so special, and my team helped me out with every serve I made, and I can’t thank them enough.

“This has been an incredible year for me and for all of us, and I’m so thankful for being able to get in the record book, but I couldn’t have done it without my teammates.”

Dunne got some great help from the service line as senior Natalie Lawton (eight points, five aces) and junior Ava Smith added two aces and a game-high six kills. Morris (29-7) recorded 27 aces to become the No. 5 team in IHSA history for uncontested winners in a match, with Dunne doing the majority of the heavy lifting beyond the stripe.

“It’s kind of funny, because after our tournament last weekend Haylee told me she didn’t think she was serving as aggressively as she needed to,” Morris coach Scott Howell said. “Tonight she certainly served aggressively, and it was so awesome to be a part of a historic night for her and for us.”

Lawton led off the ace train with her eight straight points and five aces to give Morris a 17-5 lead in the first set.

“I felt pretty comfortable serving, and all I wanted to do was to help us get off to a big lead,” Lawton said. “I was able to fire down a bunch of aces, and we were off and running.”

Dunne took a 10-point advantage at 20-10 on her serve before firing down three consecutive aces before a right-side kill from senior Felicity Emmerich and then Dunne’s winner from the stripe on set point.

“That was a good feeling knowing we opened the match with a big win, and I felt my serve was on point,” Dunne said.

It was indeed, including five straight aces to open the second set including a serve that hit the tape and just bled over to give Morris a 6-0 advantage. Three more aces would follow from Dunne to give Morris an 11-0 lead, then five more consecutive winners after a kill from Emmerich that put the home squad up 17-0.

There, Dunne would add three more daggers down the stretch to end her record-setting night from the service line as Morris advanced to the 3A regional title game versus No. 5 seed Marian Catholic on Thursday evening at 6 p.m. with a chance to make more history.

Morris will be seeking its first regional championship since 2015 and sixth in program history.

“I’ve never been on a team like this before, and it’s so special knowing we’re making history in all sorts of ways with every victory,” Dunne said. “Now we’ve got to go out and get win 30 on Thursday and keep pushing into sectionals.”

Bill Lidinsky

Bill Lidinsky

Bill Lidinsky is an award-winning sports journalist and the recipient of the Illinois Coaches Association 2016 Sportsperson of the Year Award for his softball expertise and coverage.