By Joe Kavanaugh

For 605 Sports

The defending Class B champion Chester moved a step closer to capturing back-to-back state titles on Friday night as the Flyers squeaked by a determined Burke Lady Cougars team 19-25, 25-17, 28-26, 25-18 in a match that featured excellent all-around play by both squads.

The defending champions had to get past an early wake-up alarm as Burke came out aggressively, set the early tempo by capturing the first three points and retained that three-point or more advantage for the rest of the set. 

Featuring a balanced attack led by Paige Bull and Kailee Frank Burke dominated the net both on attacks and stymieing Flyer spikes with excellent blocking. Up 17-14, Burke ran off 11 of the next 16 points to close out the set. 

“That Burke volleyball team is a really good team and that made us earn every point and didn’t give anything away. They came out ready for the match and were on fire early,” said Chester coach Jean O’Hara who will lead her team into the title in her 24th season at the Chester helm. “Volleyball sometimes works like that, it’s highs and it’s low and sometimes you have to find your equilibrium and that balance in between. And that was just one and get back to work and our girls were able to do that.”

Lily Van Hal led the bounce-back charge knocking down big swings from a variety of front-court positions while setting up teammates with quality sets. The junior’s all-around play was huge in moving the momentum to the Flyer side of the net. 

“I think she certainly did,” O’Hara said. “She had a great game tonight. She is a very determined young lady, our court leader and our go-to girl and she was resilient tonight and our girls followed her lead.”

Knotted at a set apiece, the third set was a potential game-changer, and played out like that from the first serve. Chester jumped out to a quick 8-3 lead, Burke rebounded to grab a 9-8 lead and from that point, it was a back-and-forth ping-pong match with the score knotted on eight occasions. At 25-all, sophomore Jacy Wolf stepped up huge with a left side kill down the line and a block that closed out the 28-26 Chester win. 

“She really did,” O’Hara said. “They had a couple of really big blockers over there and put up quite a brick wall. That made it hard sometimes to work around but Jacy stayed with it and got some balls to the floor at big times for us.”

Another significant contributor to the Chester win resulted from an adjustment on the front row blocking which helped to disarm the early Burke dominance spiking on the left side typically a team’s go-to kill option. 

“It took us a while to get that figured out,” O’Hara said. “We knew going in that with Page Bull in the middle and Kailee Frank on the left. She is just good and has such an arsenal and it took us a while to get her dialed in but I think late in the third and especially in game four, Emillie Bleeker came up huge in the middle and got some big blocks on her and that was critical,” 

The fourth and final was a closely contested set as well. Chester held a slim advantage early, up 8-4, but a resilient Burke team closed to 15-14 before Wolf registered four kills down the stretch before concluding the affair with an ace on the final point of the match.

Jacy Wolf led the Chester attack with 20 kills while Elise Van Hall chipped in with 19 winners. Van Hal led the team in assists with 29 while Gracie Huntimer added 29 digs for the Flyers.

With the win Chester (31-2) will look to add a second consecutive state title facing off against multi-time state champion Warner on Saturday (6:45 p.m.).

Burke will meet Hitchcock-Tulare (5 p.m.) for the third-place trophy.