Rosary beats Yorkville to reach final

Updated: October 25, 2011 7:53PM

Perhaps the Rosary volleyball team was still rolling from its last regular season game — a two-set win against Geneva on senior night in a match where Amelia Wegman tallied her 1,000 kill of her career.

The second-seeded Royals took that energy into the Yorkville Class 3A Regional semifinal and used it to top the host and third-seeded Foxes 25-15, 25-16 Tuesday.

“It definitely carried over from Geneva, but we were ready to go,” said the University of Houston-bound Wegman, whose seven kills now give her a total of 288 this year (1,007 total, which is second-best in school history).

With the win, the Royals (25-12) will play No. 1 Joliet Catholic for the chance to win their 11th consecutive regional crown. That will take place Thursday at 6 p.m.

“(Joliet Catholic) will be an interesting match,” Rosary coach Lisa Kasper said. “We are looking forward to playing them. It will be nice to see how we stack up against them.”

In Game 1, Rosary led most of the way. Yorkville got as close as 18-14 after three straight points, but the Royals followed that by scoring the next seven of eight points behind sharp serving and Foxes hitting errors.

The Royals started out the second game with the first five points behind Wegman’s serving and kills from Kate Stefanski, Briana Flagg and Jen Hewitt. Yorkville scored the next two points, but Rosary followed that with five more points for a 10-2 lead that forced a Foxes timeout.

Yorkville never caught up, and the match ended on a Wegman kill.

“When you play Rosary, you have to be mistake-free,” Yorkville coach Mike Dunn said. “You have to tip your hat to them. They stuck to their game plan and did a very good job. I think Rosary is a sectional (qualifying) team, and Joliet Catholic is too. It’s disappointing because I thought we’d play them a little bit better.”

Yorkville capped its record-breaking season at 22-9 and will graduate four seniors — Kendall Moses, Carlee Bieritz, Megan Claus and Jordann Dhuse.

“It was a special season with a special group of girls,” Dunn said. “Those seniors won eight matches combined in a two-year period before this, so that says a lot. I can’t say enough about this group. We had a great season.”

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