ROXANA – It’s always a good idea to have some sort of incentive going into a sporting tournament.
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In Piasa Southwestern’s case, it was pizza and ice cream.
“The principal - Mark Bearley - came in to one of our practices and gave the girls a good incentive – pizza and ice cream,” said Piasa Bird coach Julie Edwards, “so we’re going to hold him up to that.”
Time to pay up, Mark.
The Birds went through their group undefeated earlier in the week to reach the first-place bracket of the Roxana Invitational volleyball tournament, then went on to defeat the host Shells in the semifinals of the bracket 25-22, 22-25, 16-14 and then claimed the championship with a 25-23, 25-20 win over Jersey Saturday afternoon at Milazzo Gym to go to 5-0 on the year. Roxana took third in the tournament with a 25-18, 25-15 win over Brussels, who had fallen to the Panthers 25-11, 25-19 in their Saturday morning semifinal match.
“There was some really good competition,” Edwards said. “I was really surprised, but I was also surprised with our girls; our girls did great – I feel like we gave them a good run. They (Jersey) did good too – they had a couple of people that had problems with serve receives, so we took advantage of that and tried to do the best we could with our serves.”
Winning the tournament was a big thing for Southwestern. “I can sleep tonight; I can go eat now,” Edwards joked.
More seriously, “we have some really good middles (middle hitters) and outsides (outside hitters), some strong hitters; I love that they are aggressive at the net. I keep telling them ‘don’t stop swinging’ and whatever happens, happens,” Edwards said. “Shake off the last point because it doesn’t matter.”
The way Piasa competed really stood out for Edwards. “Now we have to go back to the drawing board and really kind of focus on what it is that we need to work on,” Edwards said. “Roxana, I think, gave us our toughest run; to get past that gives us a really good feeling.”
“The biggest thing to take away from today is that a lot of people didn’t expect us to be here, but they are” said Panther coach Justin Wilhite; JCHS went into the tournament coming off a 12-19 2017 season, including a 1-9 mark in the Mississippi Valley Conference. “It’s a hard-working group of girls that people underestimate; hopefully, they realize now what they’re capable of doing. They need just a little bit of belief; these girls are ballplayers.
“They’ll bounce back from this, I’ll bounce back – we’ll all bounce back from it, but they are a very, very phenomenal group of young ladies – they’ve got bright futures ahead of them.”
There are still some lessons the Panthers can learn from how the weekend went, Wilhite felt. “The biggest thing we can learn from this is to control our attitude and to disregard those who don’t believe in us,” Wilhite said. “I think there’s a lot of people who don’t; these girls – they’re fighters. They fight, they work, they grind and I think they’ll have a good season ahead of them.”
“I think everybody had some positives,” said Shell coach Mike McKinney of his third-place finish. “There were times that we weren’t communicating, but we were moving around the court better and spreading the ball out. Everybody got a chance to contribute as a part of the team.”
The semifinal match against Southwestern was a tough one for the Shells. “I told the girls (after the Southwestern match) ‘you did a great job’, McKinney said. “They were blocking really well on us, we didn’t have any free swings, they were scrapping for the ball – they deserved to win. You hate losing to anybody you’re going to have to play again later on, but that’s motivation for us the next time we play them – we know we’d better be ready.”
“We’re very happy,” said Raiders coach Tim Friedel about his team’s fourth-place finish. “We went 3-0 the other night (in their group competition) and beat a couple of really good teams (Civic Memorial, East Alton-Wood River and Gillespie were in their group); today, we were just outmatched a little bit. Fourth is a very good (finish) for us.
“It’s a good start for us. Aggressive play and not giving up stood out for us over the tournament; this group of girls just plays until the very end.”
In Saturday’s other brackets, CM finished fifth by winning the second-place bracket, defeating Valmeyer 25-16, 25-13 in the semifinals and Marquette Catholic 25-21, 25-11 in the final while the Explorers defeated Hardin-Calhoun 25-12, 25-20 in the other semi; in the seventh-place match, the Pirates defeated Calhoun 27-25, 20-25, 15-13.
The third-place bracket for ninth and 11th places saw EAWR defeat Granite City 25-21, 25-23 in one semifinal while McGivney Catholic upended Bunker Hill 26-24, 28-26 in the other semifinal; the Griffins claimed ninth with a 17-25, 25-19, 15-7 win over the Oilers while the Minutemaids took 11th with a 25-16, 25-13 win over Granite. In the fourth-place bracket for 13th and 15th places, Madison defeated Gillespie 25-18, 25-19 in one semifinal match while Mount Olive downed Dupo 25-14, 25-23 to reach the 13th-place match. The Wildcats then took 13th with a 25-23, 20-25, 16-14 win over the Trojans while the Tigers claimed 15th with a 26-24, 25-18 win over the Miners.
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