Girls volleyball: Fieldcrest shakes off slow start in 2A sectional semi win over Peotone

FAIRBURY — In the fast-paced game of volleyball the term ‘grind it out’ isn’t normally used in any sort of description.

But for the Fieldcrest volleyball team during Monday night’s Class 2A Prairie Central Sectional semifinal against Peotone that would be the best label to put on the opening set.

The Knights struggled early to get on track against a deliberate Blue Devils squad that was seeming digging and blocking everything sent to their side of the net while also taking advantage of opportunity to score points.

However, in the end Fieldcrest used a key five-point serving burst by Allie Wiesenhofer to close out the opener, then scored four of the final five points in the second set to advance with a 25-20, 25-21 triumph.

“I feel like we had low energy in the first set, and we just didn’t seem excited,” said Wiesenhofer, who had six kills, 15 digs, nine points and two aces. “Coach (Cathy Sanders) took a timeout late in the first set and told us we needed to pick things up. I think we all knew that, but sometimes hearing it from your coach just gets things rolling. I’m also not sure we were having fun, we were playing and talking, but not really into it for whatever reason. We came out of the time out with the energy we needed.

“We just needed to get through the first set, and when we win those, we normally calm down and play our game from there.”

Fieldcrest (29-4) now moves on to Wednesday’s 6 p.m. championship match against Illinois Valley Central, which topped Kankakee Bishop McNamara, 25-13, 25-10.

The Knights trailed in the first set 18-15 after a block by Peotone’s Marissa Velasco prompting Sanders to call the aforementioned time out. A service error by the Blue Devils brought Wiesenhofer to the line and Fieldcrest used a pair of kills from Kaitlin White and Ashlyn May to take a 21-18 lead. The Knights then closed out the set with a pair of winning swings by Kaylin Rients and one each from White and Wiesenhofer.

“We are at the point in the season where I not only see the opponents’ tendencies but ours as well,” Sanders said. “You could see right from the start tonight we were disjointed and didn’t have the cohesiveness we needed to have. I took that time out in the first set to talk about it and the girls agreed. We played much of the set flat footed and were watching instead of doing.

“We went from playing Tri-Valley (in the regional championship match last Thursday) which is a fast-paced team to Peotone tonight which plays a slower type of game. We got caught with our feet stuck in the mud, but from that time out on I thought we gradually picked up our energy and the pace of play. The girls worked things out.”

Fieldcrest jumped out to leads of 12-6, 17-10 and 21-15, but Peotone battled back to close to within 21-20. A cross-court winner from White and two more by May — the last on match point on an overpass — closed out the match.

Behind Wiesenhofer on the stat sheet were May (seven kills), White (six kills, 12 assists), Rients (five kills), Macy Gochanour (10 assists) and Carolyn Megow (five points).

Peotone (18-17) was paced by seven kills from Brooke Gwiazda and six kills from Velasco.

“Everything in the first set seemed slow,” White said. “We seemed slow and the pace of play felt slow. I think we all knew we needed to find some energy. We didn’t come out as strong as we should have, but we pulled away at the end. We were able to get through the first set and I think from there we had the energy we should have been playing with from the start. I think we all felt we were the better team, but we really didn’t show it in the opening set.

“We came in knowing who their good hitters were that we needed to keep an eye on but I’m not sure we did a great job doing that early on. Once we started doing a better job at the net, I think everything else kind of followed.”