This season ended in disastrous fashion for the Hononegah boys volleyball team, much like the past two seasons.
But it never felt that way. At all.
Instead of lamenting that they fell just one win short of a state tournament berth for the third straight year, Hononegah High School wanted to celebrate a great season after falling 25-20, 25-10 to Wheaton St. Francis High School in the Elgin-Larkin Regional Tournament final on Tuesday night.
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“We're very excited to be back,” said head coach Annie Curran, “and we never expected to get to this position again. We have a relatively young team and our young players have already got a taste of it and will be able to thrive in the coming years.”
Only five of Hononegah High School's 17 players will graduate this spring, and even the graduating seniors have played supporting roles at best on Hononegah High teams that went 26-1 and 33-7 the past two seasons.
Senior defensive specialist Trenton Lundsten said making it through this postseason “means everything.”
“This was the first year we really got a chance to play and we're all friends on and off the court,” Lundsten said. “Most of our guys were juniors so I'm sure they'll develop over the club season and offseason. Everyone will improve and I'm confident they'll pick up right where we left off this season.”
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To get to this point, Hononegah High School won two of the most thrilling matches in school history, winning the third set 35-33 to claim the regional title and then winning the third set 29-27 in overtime in the district semifinals.
“I don't think anybody expected us to get this far,” said junior setter Owen Rollinson, who recorded more than 700 assists this year. “We've played some great teams all year and we were ready for that moment. There was a lot of pressure, of course, but we'd already played a lot of good teams all year to prepare for it, so we were able to stay calm and win those games.”
Hononegah (24-12) looked like it could keep its playoff momentum going for much of the first set Tuesday, but Wheaton St. Francis (31-8) won a close first set that proved to be the match-winner, and the second set was over quickly.
“We are a very emotional team,” Lundsten said. “We play with our heart and we lost motivation after we lost the first set. As captain, I try my best to keep everyone together and keep the motivation high, but when you lose the first set it's hard, especially when you're playing against such a strong team.”
“We made a lot of mistakes tonight that we don't normally make,” Curran said. “We've brought a lot of momentum and energy into the last two games and coming into this game we had an expectation that we were going to win even though realistically we were behind. We were a little nervous. Most of this team is not part of the winning team the last two years.”
Hononegah also lost the offensive firepower of the past two years after the graduation of 6-foot-6 outside hitter Braydon Sabitski-Lind, who is now a mainstay at Ball State and led the state in scoring last year. Hononegah's top two hitters this year were 6-foot-2 junior Carter Friedland and 6-foot sophomore Jack Allen, small by volleyball standards.
“We weren't necessarily the biggest, strongest team, but we played smarter,” Curran said. “That really helped us fight through and get the win we needed. They came together. Everybody playing for each other is really big.”
“We also had a lot of guys who were strong and defended their positions well. The competition for positions on the court was pretty stiff.”
Hononegah is the only NIC-10 team to win a district tournament in the league's nine-year history of boys volleyball, and the team is more motivated than ever to become the first NIC-10 team to compete in the state tournament.
“If we can keep this teamwork up next year, I think we can do great things again,” Rawlinson said.
