Bolingbrook volleyball spreads the wealth in two-set win over Romeoville

BOLINGBROOK — With a full arsenal of weapons to choose from, Bolingbrook setter Daniel Kaduthodil is one of the happiest volleyball players around.

Kaduthodil distributed 17 assists Thursday night as the Raiders (21-5, 6-0) made quick work of Valley View School District and Southwest Prairie Conference rival Romeoville 25-18, 25-13 in front of the Lewis University men’s volleyball team, which made the short trip to watch the two rivals play.

The win moves the Raiders to 21-5 overall and 5-0 in the conference as they continue to take aim at the school-record 27 wins set by last season’s club.

“It’s an amazing feeling,” Kaduthodil said about the team’s strong season. “Coming off of club season and into school, our whole drive has been to beat the record of last year’s team.

“It’s great for me as a setter with guys like Trevor Wardlow, Edison Ah-Yo, Tavares Campbell, Yashua Beals, pretty much everybody. All I have to do is get it in the air somewhere near the net and someone is going to put it down. We started a little slow in the second set, but we know we are a good team and we just stuck with it.”

Using the energy from the excitement of seeing the Lewis men’s team, Bolingbrook got off to a quick start. Trevor Wardlow delivered three aces in a nine-point serving run to help build an 11-2 lead. The lead stretched to 19-9, but Romeoville (4-18, 1-4) picked up four straight points, getting a kill by Cameron Anderson and two aces by Jack Johnson to pull to within 19-13, but the Spartans got no closer.

The second set was a different story early on. Romeoville jumped out to a 10-6 lead, getting a kill each from Johnson and Cei’Montay Hopkins and a block by Easton Neely.

Bolingbrook, though, had the answer, and the answer’s name was Trevor Wardlow. Wardlow, who finished with 11 kills, had five of them in an 8-0 spurt that put the Raiders ahead 14-10. After a Bolingbrook hitting error made it 14-11, the Raiders went on a 6-0 spurt to move the lead to 20-11, getting a kill from Wardlow, two aces by Kaduthodil and blocks by Campbell, Wardlow, Dylan Barrera and Ah-Yo, who also had six kills.

“With the Lewis team here, we kind of lost our focus in the second set for a while,” Bolingbrook coach Molly DeSerf said. “We had to reel that in and focus on what we are trying to do, and that’s win a conference championship.

“We’ve had our ups and downs this season, but the key is to be consistent and play the whole way through the match. We want to limit the runs that the other team has. It has been a battle, but these guys know when to go and they find ways to get it done.”

Romeoville got three kills from Hopkins and two kills and a block from Neely, two of the three sophomores on the Spartans’ roster.

“We had a nice stretch where we stuck right with them,” Romeoville coach Debra Fehrenbacher said. “A lot of teams think they can just slough us off, but our guys give everything they have every day. I can’t ask for more than that.

“We are a young team. We have three sophomores on the team. One of them played JV last year, one played freshman level and one played baseball. Easton Neely was on the baseball diamond last spring, but he has been a true asset to the program, just like everyone else on the team.”