Ultimate B18 Gold is seeded third at this week's Boys' Winter Volleyball Championship at McCormick Place. Five times. Five times a team from Ultimate Volleyball Club in Frankfort has reached the championship match at the USA Volleyball Boys’ Junior National Championships. Five times, Ultimate came up short. Last year, it was Ultimate B17 Gold, which battled through the 17 Open field at the 2018 USA Volleyball Boys’ Junior National Championship in Phoenix, Arizona, before falling to Bay-to-Bay 17-1, 15-25, 25-22, 15-13, in the de...

  Joliet Cathoic suffered its first loss of the season Saturday against fellow Class 3A power Sterling. By Randy WhalenSpecial to Illprevb.comIf Sterling wasn’t a household name in Illinois volleyball prior to Saturday, it should be now. The Golden Warriors lived up to their No. 4 billing in the 1st Alliance Volleyball Club/Illprepvb.com preseason girls high school rankings by defeating No. 7 Joliet Catholic 25-19, 19-25, 25-19 Saturday at the Metea Valley/Oswego East Invitational. And that was just a semifinal.Led by t...

Nine teams remained unbeaten after the first day of the Windy City Power League 15-16 Open division played at the 1st Alliance Training Center in Woodridge (formerly Sunsetters Volleyball Center) on Saturday. But none were as impressive as 1st Alliance 16 Silver. The girls from Western Springs coasted through their first three matches of the league, defeating Fusion 15 Red 25-13, 25-9, Ignite 15 Elite 25-13, 25-7, and Sky High Adidas 16-1 NS 25-20, 25-12. “We have a solid core,” said 1st Alliance 16 Silver coach Beth Baetzel. “...

Photos by Dave Ruggles Confidence. That’s all that was lacking from Ultimate B18 Gold in the first set of its title match against powerful Pac6 18 Blue out of Pacific Palisades, California, in the 18 Open division of the 2019 Boys Winter Volleyball Championship Monday at McCormick Place. “Yeah, they took it to us in the first set,” said Ultimate B18 Gold’s 6-foot-2 outside hitter Marty Jepsen from Marist. “I think we were just playing scared in the beginning, and that's not how we play. “We just really needed to pat each other o...

Young Illini Elite 16 Cardinal, which features eighth-grader Kenna Wollard (front row, far left) and freshman Averie Hernandez of Normal West (top row, second from right), is 3-1 after two days of the Great Lakes Power League. The two best teams perhaps in any gymnasium in Illinois collided early Sunday in the Great Lakes Power League Division I. SPVB 18 Elite, which returns three players from the team that won the AAU national championship in the 18 Open division last summer, and SPVB 16 Elite, which features nearly all the players w

Each week during the season, Illprepvb.com will name a "Player of the Week" selected from nominations provided by Illinois volleyball coaches. Coaches can nominate their players by providing a 100-150 word summary of their achievement and a 2x3-inch high quality headshot and sending it to illprepvb@gmail.com by noon on Sunday of the week for which they wish to nominate a player.This week’s “Player of the Week” is (Stanford) Olympia’s 5-foot-9 senior outside hitter Kalli Terrell. Terrell is a four-year varsity standout who recently recorded ...

Katie Erdmann of tiny Forreston (back row, second from right) led the state in kills last fall. Now she's looking to take her game to the next level. People’s reactions range from stoic to surprised when Katie Erdmann tells people she goes to tiny Forreston High School (enrollment: 246), nestled in the northwest corner of Illinois some 30 miles west of Rockford. “They don’t really joke about it, but they always ask me how many people are in my class,” she said. “When I tell them about 50, they say, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ “Yes … I know ...