By Mark Gregory
Sports Editor
@Hear_The_Beard
mark@buglenewspapers.com
For years, the Downers Grove North girls volleyball team was good enough to compete for a conference or even a regional championship, however, the other teams were just a little better.
This year, that may not be the case.
“Our goal is to win conference, which we haven’t done since 2007,” said North coach Mark Wasik. “There have been a great group of girls in other programs and we just couldn’t get past them and it is finally in the making for us to win conference.”
The Trojans will win with a victory over York in the final match of the season.
After that game, North will join the rest of Illinois in the IHSA playoffs, in which the Trojans are the No. 1 seed in the Glenbard West Sectional and will host the regional, where it will face the winner of No. 16 Glenbard North and No. 17 Willowbrook October 24 at 6:30 p.m.
A win would place North in a regional championship match against either No. 8 Lyons Township or No. 9 West Chicago.
Wasik knows the seed, however, doesn’t mean the Trojans will win.
“We can’t look past anyone. We need to win a regional first and we will have to get past some respectable teams to do that,” he said. “For years, we have been the No. 5 and 6 and 7 seeds, where we had beat the No. 1 seed in other sectionals, but because our sectional was so deep, we have been pretty good and couldn’t even come up with a regional championship because of the depth of the sectional. This is our time to take advantage of an opportunity, but nothing will be given to us. We can’t assume anything. The only thing that matters with the seed is when we play who. We are not counting on that seed because that will not earn us anything — we have to go and take it.”
What has North (18-10) ready for the postseason is its schedule this season.
“We have 10 losses on the season and we are still a top 10 or 15 team in the state. We haven’t had a bad loss this year,” he said. “Out of any public school, we play the most demanding schedule in the state. MaxPreps ranks the schedules and the only teams ahead of us are (Mother) McCauley, Benet and Marist and we are next, so we are prepared.”
While playing some of the top teams in the state has helped the Trojans, what also helped was a week with no games late in the season where they could focus on practice.
“We have been off for a week, so our practices have been really good. they have been quality practices where everyone was working hard.We are just trying to get everyone to improve and that is what they have been doing,” Wasik said. “If you don’t value practice that week will feel like a grind, but these girls value practice and they just worked hard all week long and it was fun. With that practice, we got better.”