Boys Volleyball: L-W East's Magrum Serves Up a Winner

The Lincoln-Way East boys volleyball team is always looking for strong starts.

And, needless to say, the Griffins couldn't have started off much better than during Wednesday's non-conference straight-sets victory over Neuqua Valley in Frankfort.

Lincoln-Way East jumped to an 8-0 lead behind the serving of senior outside hitter Greg Magrum and cruised to a 25-15 victory in Game 1 and then held off a rally from the Wildcats in Game 2 to win 26-24.

"I was just serving and felt that leading off with just powerful serving could get them out of their rotation," Magrum said. "They seemed to be very comfortable here, and I wanted to show them it's not very easy to play with us on our home court."

The Griffins improved to 18-5, while the Wildcats dropped to 19-4.

"We've had a number of matches like that where we just look awful, literally just awful," Neuqua Valley coach Erich Mendoza said. "I'm just really disappointed with how we played in Game 1 because I know we're much better than that."

The ability to take opponents out of their game early is something the Griffins have had a great deal of success with this spring. It continued on Wednesday.

"We played really well, and our goal every game is to serve aggressively and get them out of their system," LIncoln-Way East coach Kristopher Fiore said. "We did that well and had them scrambling. We played great defense and really played errorless volleyball for at least the first half of the first game."

The Griffins appeared to be cruising to another comfortable victory in Game 2, leading 15-9 on a dink by Magrum, but the Wildcats wouldn't go away easily.

"I was upset because we got sloppy," Fiore said. "We had some errors and let them right back in the game. I think we may have gotten a little lazy or something and we're trying to battle these lapses in games because you can't give up big runs like this. Usually, you don't beat a team when you give up six or seven points in a row."

Neuqua Valley rallied in Game 2 to tie it at 21-21 and the teams would find themselves tied three more times before the Griffins scored twice on a net violation and errant kill attempt by the Wildcats.

"Lincoln-Way East is a great team and we always have really good matches with them," Mendoza said. "They played smarter volleyball than we did, they passed better, played better defense and hit better. They showed that you don't have to swing away every time and had a lot of nice points on tips and rolls. They just played better than we did."

John Kanapick led the Griffins with five kills and two blocks, while Piet and Magrum each had four kills and Sean Piet added two blocks. Jake Tomaras had 13 digs, and freshman Austin Royer led the Griffins with nine assists.

"Our passing was pretty solid, which really helped out our offense in swinging," Piet said. "The key for us is just keeping the ball in bounds and that's what kept us winning."

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