Girls volleyball: Lynney Tarnow, Benet grind past Glenbard West for Class 4A sectional title

ST. CHARLES – As far as Benet is concerned, any one of its cast of characters can take the spotlight at any moment.

One minute, it’s Lynney Tarnow towering high at the net for blocks; the next, it’s Taylor Kunka subbing in for lethal aces or a combination of Ava Novak or Gabby Stasys powering down kills. Of course, any rally begins with the sure-fire digging ability of Aniya Warren.

The grand combination leads to, well, titles.

“There’s lots of people that can get it done on every given night,” Baker said following an ultimate 25-22, 25-18 sweep over Glenbard West in the St. Charles North Class 4A Sectional final. “Some teams, you’ve got a couple of people that you can kind of game plan for. It’s difficult to do that here. You camp on someone, we’re not afraid to go to anybody that’s in the front row.”

Benet (37-2) won its fourth sectional title since 2018, and 11th in the tenure of coach Brad Baker dating back to 2008. The Redwings now advance to Friday’s supersectional match vs. New Trier at Bartlett High School at 7 p.m.

Tarnow, at 6-foot-5, is at the very center of it. Tarnow finished with seven kills and four blocks.

“[When] you play high-level club volleyball, you get comfortable playing against this level of competition,” Baker said of Tarnow. “This is just what she does all year round.”

The cohesion of the team, however, starts with the inherent trust of each player around them.

“I think [the team works] because we all trust each other,” Tarnow said. “We all know that we’re all really amazing players and we can have each other’s backs when someone gets subbed in or gets subbed out. Whoever is in the game will do their job.”

In the first set, both teams traded marginal leads to be deadlocked 21-21. Hilltoppers freshman Cara Herbert had just put two aces down to tie it after being down by four.

Benet recovered by coaxing an attack error, an ace from Kunka and another attack error to force match point. GBW senior Marin Johnson powered down one of her seven kills to stave it off for one more point, but the Redwings outlasted a back-and-forth volley that landed outside the box for the 25-22 win.

In set two, the Redwings managed to build more sizable leads of four or five points at a time, thanks to efforts from Stasys (four kills), Audrey Asleson (three kills), Sophia Chinetti (four kills) and more. Benet soon pulled away, thanks to a sequence of consecutive blocks from Tarnow and Stasys and an Tarnow ace to force match point at 24-16.

The Hilltoppers were kept alive by kills from senior Avery Herbert (four kills) and senior Breccan Scheck (five kills) to make it 24-18, but Benet sophomore Ellie Stiernagle’s dump kill finished it off.

Glenbard West (35-4) had only one loss outside of the state of Illinois – a 2-1 loss to Ozark High School in Missouri back in September. The rest was all to Benet.

“You play a team enough, you better know what they’re doing, right?” Baker said. “You better have an idea, but then you’ve got to perform....you’ve got to get it done on the court. You’ve got to get it done when it really matters and they did. They’re very good. Very good. The past few times we played them, they won service-pass, and I thought we were able to win that tonight...that’s a very good team. Very good passing team and well-coached.”

The Hilltoppers certainly had a season to remember.

“When you look back at our season, we went 35-4,” Hilltoppers coach Dan Scott said. “Three of the losses came to this team that went second in state and returned the entire starting lineup. The other loss was to a team in Missouri. This was the only team in Illinois we lost to and it felt like a state championship match today. I think that caliber was there and they’re going to go on and do really good things.”

Beyond the win-loss record, for Scott, it’s the continuity of this group that will stand up over time.

“They did everything right: From setting up the nets, to stretching, to taking care of their bodies, to supporting each other and always being on time” Scott continued. “It’s those little things that they were bought in. In it as a group to win it and they achieved some special things: We had the third-most wins ever in school history, we had two conference championships back-to-back in probably the hardest conference [in the state]. ... Just a really special group.”