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46 | April 12, 2018 | The orland park prairie Sports<br />
opprairie.com<br />
Eye-yi-yi: Staff, students have fun at Classic<br />
JEFF VORVA, Sports Editor<br />
When Courtney Milligan<br />
was growing up in Decatur,<br />
she said she was a swimmer.<br />
That means she was used<br />
to chlorine in her eyes.<br />
But the Orland Park<br />
School District 135 Crosstown<br />
Classic was even<br />
tougher on her eyes.<br />
Milligan, the assistant<br />
principal at Liberty School,<br />
was a member of the Liberty<br />
staff volleyball team<br />
that beat Prairie School staff<br />
members 24-26, 25-11, 25-<br />
16 in front of hundreds of<br />
fans Thursday, April 5 in the<br />
third Crosstown Classic at<br />
Jerling Jr. High School.<br />
Five minutes before the<br />
start of the match, a ball hit<br />
her in the right eye hard during<br />
warmups. She spent a<br />
few minutes smiling, wincing<br />
and covering the eye with<br />
her hand but proclaimed, “It<br />
didn’t hurt.”<br />
After the match, Milligan,<br />
Liberty Principal Daniel<br />
Prorok, Prairie Principal<br />
Jeff Nightingale and Prairie<br />
Assistant Principal Laurie<br />
Patterson all had pies thrown<br />
in their faces as a part of a<br />
raffle.<br />
Both of Milligan’s eyes<br />
took a beating after that, but<br />
she still maintained a smile.<br />
Interestingly, the pregame<br />
shot to the right peeper came<br />
courtesy of Prairie’s Lauren<br />
Billo. Billo has gone through<br />
some pain of her own this<br />
school year. She is an assistant<br />
girls volleyball coach,<br />
at Sandburg and injured her<br />
Achilles while coaching in<br />
the fall and needed surgery<br />
in October. She was seen<br />
scooting around on a scooter<br />
during some matches.<br />
This was her first volleyball<br />
action since the surgery.<br />
“That felt good,” she said<br />
after the match. “I was a<br />
little nervous and tentative at<br />
first. But it was fun.”<br />
Billo is a co-coach of Prairie’s<br />
eighth-grade volleyball<br />
team with Bill Zopf.<br />
Liberty has made it threefor-three<br />
in Crosstown wins.<br />
Rebecca Reitz, who works<br />
with Marla Erdmann, Courtney<br />
Luckhard, Dolly Mc-<br />
Namara and Margaret Stoklosa<br />
on the Volleyball Game<br />
Committee, said money<br />
raised from the event goes to<br />
the Prairie Elementary Parents<br />
for Education organization,<br />
as well as the Liberty<br />
School Parents for Education<br />
group.<br />
RIGHT: Young Liberty<br />
School fans cheer during<br />
the Crosstown Classic on<br />
Thursday, April 5, at Jerling<br />
Junior High. PHOTOS BY JEFF<br />
VORVA/22ND CENTUREY MEDIA.<br />
Prairie’s Lauren Billo played volleyball for the first time since having surgery on her<br />
Achilles in October.<br />
Liberty Principal Daniel Prorok took a pie to the face after<br />
his team’s volleyball win over Prairie.
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