Glenbard East got out to leads of 5-0 and 8-1 in the second game its three-game loss to Neuqua Valley on Friday in the IHSA boys volleyball state quarterfinals.
When the Wildcats closed it to 19-15 on one of Jake Blackman's 14 kills, the Rams called a timeout. After the timeout, the mega rally commenced.
This was the rally of all rallies, who knows, maybe 15 touches, maybe more. What happened for sure is senior Brad Stout running through the retaining rope and diving into the Neuqua student section to make the most impossible of at least four crazy passes in the sequence.
"For rallies that are that important, it's just like, you want to keep going," Stout said. "You don't want to make a mistake. You want to put the ball down. So for the back row people, we just have to keep getting the ball up. On a play like that, I didn't know I was that close to the crowd. Even if I knew, I wasn't going to stop."
The ball got back to Blackman, who put it down again to make it 19-16. Glenbard East scored six of the final nine points to force a third game, but that's not how Blackman remembers it.
"Right after that point, if you would say it's 0-0, after that I think we won that game," Blackman said.
The Wildcats didn't give up many easy points, putting up big numbers in passing. Stout had 10 digs. Rob Bauer had 11 digs. Collin Adler had seven.
"I was astounded by our back row," middle hitter Brian Clark said. "I don't think we've had that good a defense since, maybe all season. A lot of digs. I'm really proud of the effort."
Around the corner, sort of northeast, up there in michigan land, lives a little old lady and a little old man cheering for the wildcats all they can!!!! we used the ihsa website to follow scores and the "info" to picture it and your blogs to color it!! (not exactly on our own..our son-in-law directed us, bless him) with thanks and cheers