As an All-State setter two decades ago at Brother Rice, Marist girls volleyball coach Jordan Vidovic knows the position.
So he knows that he has a special setter this season.
That’s freshman Haven Enselman, who not only distributed the ball, she attacked it, too.
With the score tied in the second set, Enselman had a block and a kill to highlight a match-ending 4-0 run as Marist outlasted rival Mother McAuley 26-24, 25-22 on Nov. 6 in the title match of the Class 4A Rich Sectional in Richton Park.
The defending Class 4A champion RedHawks (33-5) advanced to face Normal — which defeated Belleville East, 25-22, 23-25, 25-12 to win the O’Fallon Sectional — in the Bradley-Bourbonnais Supersectional on Nov. 10. The winner moves on to the state finals Nov. 14-15 at CEFCU Arena in Normal.
“It’s unreal,” Vidovic said of Enselman coming through down the stretch. “No freshman does anything like that at that point in a match like this. But I’ve seen what she can do, so it wasn’t a surprise to me.”
Enselman, who helped lead Hickory Creek Middle School in Frankfort to the Illinois Elementary School Association Class 4A state girls volleyball titles in her seventh- and eighth-grade seasons finished with 25 assists, five digs, two kills and two blocks.
“Yeah, at the start of the season, I knew we knew we could do it,” Enselman said. “I believed in us.”
But did Enselman, who didn’t decide to go to Marist until this past May, believe in herself with the match on the line?
“Yes, I’m such a competitive person,” she said. “I knew I could do it. I also knew if I gave Maggie (Kurpeikis) the ball that she’d put it down.”
Kurpeikis, a junior opposite side hitter, did just that with a match-high 12 kills. Her biggest one of the night tied the second set at 22-22 and started the deciding 4-0 spurt. A double hit by the Mighty Macs (34-5), their sixth error down the stretch, ended it.
“It just shows how much fight we have,” Kurpeikis said. “No one competes more than us in practice. We were down big in the second set, but I just kept telling the team that it was our game.
“Haven brought so much fire tonight. It was great to see her come out like that.”
McAuley (34-5) led much of the second set, jumping out to leads of 11-5 and 16-11. But then the Mighty Macs made four errors in a 5-0 run, which saw Marist tie it at 16-16.
Cassidy Cage and Savanah Weathers each had six kills and two blocks, while fellow senior Elayna Davidson added 15 digs for Marist.
The first set featured 14 ties, seven of those from 15-15 on. Cage had a kill and a block for the final two points.
Freshman middle blocker Chyla Jukes led the Mighty Macs with eight kills. Sophomore middle blocker Alyson Cahill had four kills, sisters Cayla and Jayce Prohaska, along with Keira McQuillan, all added three kills, while Peyton Heatherly had 19 assists.
“We had a lot of unforced errors, and when you are playing at a championship level, you can’t do that,” McAuley coach Jen DeJarld said. “This was not indicative of what a great season we had. We felt good, but we didn’t complete the job.”