Girls Volleyball: Megan Maier, Oswego East shake off early jitters, rally past Waubonsie Valley in season opener

AURORA – Megan Maier’s determination is a difference-maker on the volleyball court – and apparently in charting the course of life off the court.

The Oswego East senior always wanted to go to veterinary school, narrowed down her choices, and reached out to colleges. She settled on Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, known for its veterinary medicine program, and never stopped emailing them, even during a volleyball coaching change.

“I was completely like ‘Can I come for a visit?’” Maier said. “They got a new coach, said we want you, and I got offered last Thursday. Pretty excited.”

Maier’s never give up attitude showed Wednesday, too.

Maier and the Wolves struggled through an error-plagued first set in their season-opening match at Waubonsie Valley. But they gathered themselves, got Maier going and went on to a 21-25, 25-16, 25-18 win in Aurora.

“We came into this game probably a little overconfident,” Maier admitted. “We all really needed to get it together. We needed to work together, and we needed to work smart.”

Maier is one of nine seniors on an Oswego East team that is coming off a 20-14 season, the 20 wins the most in school history. She’s one of six Wolves’ starters that play club for various Sports Performance teams, and it shows in three-set matches like Wednesday’s.

“Insanely valuable,” said Oswego East assistant coach Chris LaCalamita, who has been coaching the team while head coach Dina Beamon is on maternity leave. “All of our players are club players, and they know the drive to win. It’s the refusal to lose aspect that pushes them in matches like this.”

It helped Oswego East overcome a first set in which the Wolves committed 13 errors and missed five serves.

“First-match jitters is what it looked like,” LaCalamita said. “Coming from a very successful club season, for most of these girls working on offseason camps and everything, they’re itching to play, they haven’t played in 2-3 months. They were ready to get back on the court. Once they got in the groove of things things started to smooth out and they cleaned things up.”

And the Wolves got Maier the ball. The 5-foot-9 outside had six of her match-high 13 kills in the second set. Cailyn Smiley, a 5-8 senior outside, added three of her 11 kills in the second set.

“Volleyball is such a volatile sport. You can be up, you can be down,” LaCalamita said. “Meg got hot so we kept feeding Meg and it worked out. She turned on the jets and decided she wanted that match.”

Waubonsie is a team coming off a 5-31 season, winless in the DuPage Valley Conference. The Warriors received a tough break before the season even started when top hitter Ashlyn Hickey tore her MCL and hurt her ACL coming down during a scrimmage last Friday. The Warriors had sophomore Kaitlyn Reinhard playing outside in her first match.

But the Warriors showed plenty of fight. Reinhard had six kills, senior Alexandra Skurka and Waubonsie never trailed in taking the first set.

The Warriors struggled with missed serves as the match wore on – 10 for the match – but didn’t get down even when they trailed.

“I thought we maintained a positive attitude and talked to each other and didn’t get down. It was just a matter of limiting those mistakes,” Waubonsie coach Kari Galen said. “We had some new kids out there, a sophomore in her first match and I thought she did a good job. I told the girls as long as they can maintain that chemistry on the court, that’s hard to coach. We can eliminate those errors.”

Samantha Miserendino added seven digs and Sarah Fournier six digs for Waubonsie.

Vivian Campbell had 23 assists and four aces and Smiley 11 digs for Oswego East. Chloe Austin added eight digs and Savina Trujillo four kills.

After a record 2021 season, Maier said the Wolves are aiming for even bigger and better things this fall.

“We feel we can go far – we want to win conference, that’s our first goal,” Maier said. “We’re all really excited for the season. We’ve all been working for this.”