One NIC-10 volleyball team served way to regional title; another pulls off crazy 35-33 win

Adonis Hilton curled the volleyball in his right arm like Michael Jordan doing a Rock the Cradle dunk. He then stepped forward and spiked the ball with his same arm, rifling a serve at Boylan.

“It’s a little unorthodox, but I learned it when I was younger and it just stuck with me,” Hilton said of tossing the ball up and serving it with the same hand.

Hilton’s serve is almost like a spike. Thursday, with Guilford clinging to a two-point lead late in the second set, Hilton served back-to-back aces followed by a third serve that caromed off the back wall after being deflected by a Boylan player in an unsuccessful attempt to return it in Guilford’s 25-16, 25-20 victory in the championship game of the Auburn Regional.

“He’s like another front-row attack,” Guilford coach Trace Noack said. “When he is serving that ball that way, we score sometimes more from the service line than we do at the net. It’s rare to have someone who can serve like that that consistently.”

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NIC-10 champion Guilford (20-1, 15-1 NIC-10) advances to Saturday’s Elgin Larkin Sectional against Wheaton St. Francis (29-8). The Vikings will be joined by NIC-10 runner-up Hononegah. The Indians will play Geneva (22-12), which upset Wheaton-Warrenville South in three sets.

Hononegah (23-11, 13-3 NIC-10) won its fourth straight regional title in dramatic fashion. And familiar fashion. Only this was the way Hononegah had ended its season the last two years, not extended it. Hononegah, the only NIC-10 boys volleyball team to ever win a match at sectionals, lost in three sets each of the last two years in the sectional finals. After winning the opening set.

This year, Hononegah beat Streamwood 25-21, 23-25, 35-33. For almost 20 points in a row at the end, the match hung in the balance on almost every point.

“It was so crazy,” Hononegah coach Annie Curran said. “Streamwood is so talented. It was so error-free. Both teams didn’t make mistakes. One mistake and the other team was going to win.

“It was so stressful, but I had to maintain my composure for the kids. During timeouts, they would ask, ‘What do I have to do.’ I said, ‘You know what to do. But you have to play with heart and I can’t do that for you.’ That was the turning point. They knew they were capable of doing more than was expected of them this season.”

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Jack Allen had 15 kills, Noah Duer 20 digs and Owen Rollinson 37 assists as Hononegah got past Streamwood (25-7) despite graduating nine seniors last year, including the first NCAA Division I recruit in conference history in Braydon Savitski-Lynde.

“They were told this was a rebuilding year and our kids took that to heart,” Curran said. “They didn’t want this to be a rebuilding year. They just want people to see us as good. They wanted to step into their own shoes, not fill somebody else’s.”

Boylan (14-9) was hanging with Guilford, trailing only 17-16 in the second set when Hilton put away a kill. Then at 19-17, he won those three points in a row with his serve to put Guilford up 22-17.

“It’s a whole-body affair,” coach Noack said. “He really leans into it and gets a lot of power into it. And especially when the score is 19-17 and he can pull us ahead like that, it’s super fun to watch.”

Hilton says he puts “every single part” of his body into his serve.

“You will be in the air and you feel something in your left toe,” he said. “It’s crazy, but every single part of your body, you’ve got to get into it. The adrenaline gets you going. You want to crush the ball.”

He almost had a fourth straight serve that didn’t get returned but his toe touched the service line on his last serve, giving Boylan the point. Still, the 5-foot-11 Hilton is the one who powered Guilford the most Thursday.

“He puts all his strength into it,” said 6-4 middle blocker Lukas Anderson, who led Guilford with eight kills, two more than Hilton and Jaden Webster. “He hypes up the team and keeps the energy going.”

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Adonis Hilton serve powers Guilford volleyball; Hononegah's crazy win