May 10--Freshman Jeff Jendryk was looking ahead within minutes of helping the Loyola men's volleyball team make more history.
"The first thing Jeff said to me when I gave him a hug was, 'Let's get another one,'" Loyola junior Thomas Jaeschke said.
With all but two mainstays returning, the Ramblers undoubtedly will have a good shot at a third straight NCAA title.
But it will be hard for them to top Saturday night's scintillating NCAA final against Lewis.
The Ramblers won 3-2, taking the fifth set in overtime 23-21 after losing a 14-11 lead and staving off three match points.
"I think we gave you a match to remember for a long, long time," Lewis coach Dan Friend said.
It is hard to imagine a more exciting championship match in any sport than the 2-hour, 38-minute battle between two Chicago area schools at Stanford's Maples Pavilion.
Lewis overcame a 15-10 deficit to win the first set 25-21. Loyola rallied from a 21-18 deficit to win the second 25-23. After the Ramblers had seemingly taken command with a 25-15 victory in the third, Lewis resisted two match points in the fourth for an overtime 27-25 win.
In the fifth set, played to 15 points, the Flyers fought off six match points.
The outcome made Loyola's Shane Davis just the second coach to win back-to-back titles in the tournament's 46-season history, joining UCLA's Al Scates.
A year ago, the Ramblers had become the first school from the central time zone to win a Division I-II title. This year, the final matched two schools from east of the Rockies for the first time.
"This one felt a lot better than last year's," Davis said. "To repeat was so tough. Going into the season, we didn't know what to expect."
Over the season, Davis would have five freshman regulars -- often four on the court with two seniors and Wheaton Warrenville's Jaeschke, the national player of the year.
One of the freshmen, St. Francis' Jendryk, won the tournament's most outstanding player award after beginning the season with doubts about whether he belonged.
"Coming in, playing with these (veteran guys), I didn't think I can do it, but I definitely showed them I can," Jendryk said.
Davis also did not expect to get this far when he became head coach 11 years ago at age 23.
A Loyola grad, Davis took the job mainly out of loyalty to the program, which had an interim coach in 2003 and was in danger of being cut as the school re-evaluated its athletics. He expected to stay one year and then move out of the sports world.
Last June, after winning the NCAA title, Davis signed a new, five-year contract.
"It's never-ending hunger, never-ending work," Jaeschke said. "We're not going to stop."
