Girls Volleyball: After dropping first set, IC Catholic rallies to top Freeburg, advances to 2A state title match

NORMAL – After Freeburg took the first set of their Class 2A semifinal Friday, IC Catholic Prep started playing a little more freely.

Instead of tensing up at being behind a set, the Knights made some adjustments and matched the Midgets’ scrappy brand of volleyball for a 17-25, 25-22, 25-18 victory at Redbird Arena.

IC Catholic advances to the Class 2A state championship match against Genoa-Kingston on Saturday afternoon. The Knights will be playing for their fourth state title.

[ Photos from the IHSA Class 2A State Tournament semifinal between IC Catholic and Freeburg ]

Freeburg’s defense was particularly tough in the first set, but the Knights (33-1) matched that defensive prowess in the next two sets to turn the tide.

“I’ve got to hand it to Freeburg; they were swinging away and hitting it as hard as they could at us. And it was hard at first, in the first set, to just get all of their strong hits up,” said IC Catholic libero Alysa Lawton, who had 12 digs. “It was different because usually on the right side, we’ve been playing them to hit cross, and it’s a different hit line and they were swinging away. But I feel like our defense adjusted and we really went all out and went for every ball to make sure it didn’t drop.”

Freeburg (33-8) took control of the first set with a 6-0 run to take an 11-5 lead. The Midgets stretched the margin to as many as 10 (19-9), then traded points with the Knights the rest of the way.

The second set was all about Ava Falduto. IC Catholic’s junior hitter and Penn State recruit had two tip-kills early, then served consecutive aces to stake IC Catholic to a 9-4 lead. Later on in the set, she slammed back-to-back kills before junior setter Lucy Russ (28 assists, nine digs, five kills) slammed a second-touch kill for an 18-12 lead.

“I started running Ava up the middle of the court, and I thought we had a lot of success through that,” Russ said. “Their defense played a really good game, but I think that our hitters put the ball down. They played really scrappy, and our team just showed them how we put the ball down.”

Freeburg rallied, as two kills by Mia Dircks (11 kills) and her block a few points later tied the set at 21-21. Tied again at 22, Jenny Fromelt stuffed a block to give the Knights the lead, and Falduto stuffed a block and spiked a kill to force a third set.

Falduto just kept coming all match long, taking 69 swings and recording 20 kills to go with a team-high 16 digs. Even after Freeburg would get a block on her, she’d regroup and go back up to finish off a point on her second or sometimes even third kill attempt.

“I knew that I was going to have a big block against me. Freeburg is a really strong team, and so I knew that I would have to find new ways to score,” Falduto said. “So when Lucy started giving me the ball and moving me around, it really helped. I found holes in their defense, and I had help from Alysa and the whole back court telling me what was open, along with [Knights] Coach [Nancy] Kerrigan.”

In the third set, Kiely Kemph’s kill broke an 8-8 tie, and Delilah Hyland (8 kills) had two kills around a Freeburg spike to make it 13-10. The Knights slowly pulled away from there, as two back-row kills by Falduto and a block by Cassie Levy made it 20-14.

Falduto ripped two more kills in a three-point span, then Russ dumped a second touch to get to 24-17. After a kill by Freeburg’s Bella Borja (13 kills) staved off the first match point, Falduto ripped her final kill to seal it and send IC Catholic to the state title match.

“It’s just the ability to mentally reset and think, ‘We have to win two sets in a row,’” Kerrigan said about losing the first set. “And the girls are super confident in what they do – as they should be – so I just shrugged my shoulders, looked at them and said, ‘OK, we’re going to do it the hard way,’ so here we are.

“We weren’t executing to our game plan as I would’ve liked, so we talked about that in between sets, and when we came back out, the execution changed, and the outcome started changing very quickly with that.”