MERRILLVILLE | Andrean's girls volleyball team has reached exactly as far as the 2011 team did.
With a 25-9, 25-4, 25-16 win over Griffith in the single-match regional Tuesday, the 59ers reached their second straight Class 3A semistate.
Winning Saturday morning against Fairfield (34-1), a four-game winner over Concordia, would give this Andrean team one more step.
"We're going to take all the experience from the (postseason) tough games to semistate to move to the semistate championship," Andrean senior setter Grace Cooper said.
Andrean easily handled Griffith in the first two games. The 59ers (28-7) rattled off 18 consecutive points in the second game to take the commanding two-game lead in little more than 30 minutes.
In the final game, the Panthers (12-21) played the way coach Erin Delaney had seen in wins this season. Forcing errors and finding kills around blocks, Griffith took its first lead of the match in the third game, and after falling behind 16-7, went on a 7-0 run to pull within two points.
"My team is one of those teams that show up when they want to show up and other times when they don't," Delaney said. "This was one of those times they decided to show up too little too late."
The three-game win was the shortest of the postseason for Andrean, which won in five games against Kankakee Valley, four games against Knox and five games against Hanover Central.
"Our sectional was a labor of work. It was brutal, with 14 games in two days, that was a marathon," Andrean coach Julie Wiejak said. "They deserve this."
The Niners picked up 15 kills from junior Kellie Wojciechowski and 27 assists from Cooper.
Griffith was led by five kills from outside hitter Lisette Roldan.
"This team did a lot of things last year's team didn't do. This team won the (Lafayette) Harrison Tournament, and last year's team didn't win any tournaments," Wiejak said. "It's a complete different script, everything is different. The way we won sectionals is different. The way we won regionals is different. I can only imagine our path is set this way, because this team is meant for something different."
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