The undefeated Emmaus boys volleyball team has been taken to five sets three times this season.
Two of those five-set tests have come against Freedom.
In the District 11 Class 3A championship at Catasauqua Tuesday night, Emmaus went through a wave of emotions for its first district title since 2018.
The top-seeded Green Hornets defeated Freedom 25-19, 26-28, 19-25, 25-22, 15-13 to earn their sixth district title in program history.
“With Freedom, we always go to five sets. They’re a scrappy team, a good team, their coaches are good,” Emmaus junior Ben Skekel said. “For us, we haven’t been in that situation a lot to where we’re playing through exhaustion, going through the final points. It feels good to just get that win.”
“I’m just super proud that we didn’t back off. We didn’t back away, we didn’t decide to shrink and call it quits; we wanted to scrap for that fifth-set victory and we were here for the long haul,” Emmaus coach Jon Wilson said. “I want to be a team that’s defined by its grit and its relentlessness and a team that just doesn’t go away. I’m super proud.”
Emmaus (21-0) will face the third-placed team from District 3 in the first round of PIAA 3A tournament Tuesday, June 3.
The Patriots (17-5), who were looking for their first district title since 2009, will face the District 2 champ in the first round of states.
Freedom won the second and third sets and led early in the fourth before the Green Hornets rallied.
An ace from senior Gabe Dressler gave Emmaus its first lead of the fourth set, 14-13. After Dressler made a diving dig, Skekel lobbed a kill to extend its lead to 17-15.
The Green Hornets won four in a row and clinched the fourth set 25-22 when Freedom junior Dylan Shupp’s block went wide.
Emmaus junior Chris Mitchell got the first kill in the fifth set off an assist from Skekel and Emmaus never trailed from there.
With the score tied 7-7, Skekel set up senior Lucas Mondin, whose kill put the Hornets up 8-7. Back-to-back mishits by Freedom pushed Emmaus’ lead to 10-7 and, a bit later, another Skekel-to-Mondin connection made it 12-9.
“Really just pushed through the adversity,” Mondin said of what Emmaus did well. “There was a lot of challenges in that game, mental struggles throughout everyone on the team… I think pushing harder than ever before was our best attribute.”
A kill by junior Bilaal Kerim gave the Hornets match point up 14-11, but Freedom earned back-to-back points. Skekel set up fellow junior Grayson Answini for the match-clinching kill.
“We’ve been in these finals before, we’ve lost,” Skekel said. “We lost to Parkland freshman year, sophomore year we lost in the semis to Whitehall… It just feels like we accomplished something. There’s still more to be done but it feels good.”
Against the Patriots’ fierce middle block, led by junior Ben Soleymani and sophomore Carter Richardson, Skekel’s vision and ability to provide assists from different angles was pivotal to Emmaus.
“Today, they (Freedom) had a great blocking night. They played really well, I think they scrapped really hard getting loose balls that most teams would let drop,” Mondin said. “You could tell they really wanted that win. Trying to avoid their block, go around them, adjust to them, took us a little longer than usual but, once we got it, it helped us a lot.”
“I watch a lot of film, I watch volleyball all the time,” said Skekel, who’s been playing since he was in seventh grade and is in his first year as a setter. “… The process that was going on was just trying to get as many one-on-one’s as I can.”
Powered by aces by Dressler, Answini and junior Sander Houtz, the Hornets were largely in control throughout the first set.
In a back-and-forth second set, Soleymani recorded a block and then a kill off an assist from senior setter Joseph Braun to put the Patriots up 21-19.
A block by Emmaus junior Cameron Furniss pulled it back to 21-20, but, after a long review by the officials, the score was changed to 22-20. The score was ostensibly changed to make up for a previous missed point for Freedom, but no one on press row could account for that missed point in the second set.
Braun assisted junior Ayden Willman and then Shupp before an ace clinched the second set for the Patriots 28-26.
“We know that the game is long, we know that there’s more sets to be played,” Skekel said.
“It’s a very passionate thing from us, which I’m actually very happy about that we react in that way,” Mondin said of the Hornets’ mentality. “It shows that we care, it shows that we’re engaged and really want to win… There’s nothing we can do about the call, just settling in and coming back from that helps us a lot.”
With the third set tied at 19-19, the Patriots won six straight points, the last of which was an ace from senior Bailey Fleckenstein, to go up two sets to one before Emmaus rallied.
“Overall, I’m absolutely happy with a win no matter how rough it may seem on the outside. I think one of our biggest strengths is being there to support one another,” Wilson, who’s in his second year in charge of Emmaus, said. “We have a large roster, we have a lot of guys that can step in. From the bench to the effort on the court, we had each other’s backs which was great.”
The Green Hornets reached the PIAA 3A semifinals in 2017 and 2018 but have yet to win a state title.
Southern Lehigh completes 3-peat
Southern Lehigh swept Bethlehem Catholic 25-10, 25-14, 25-16 in the D-11 2A final for its third straight district championship.
The Spartans (13-7) will host District 1 champ Dock Mennonite in a PIAA 2A subregional play-in game 5 p.m. Thursday. Southern Lehigh swept Dock Mennonite last year to reach the state tournament for the first time.
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Desmond Boyle may be reached at dboyle@lehighvalleylive.com.
