The ending came much sooner than they’d hoped, much sooner than they’d expected.
The Pennsbury Falcons, ranked third in the state in the latest poll, saw their season come to an end after the opening round of pool play on Friday at the PIAA Class AAA Tournament at Penn State University.
After defeating Hempfield 2-1 in their first match (26-24, 25-15, 21-25), the Falcons fell to Parkland 2-1 (18-25, 24-26, 25-17) and North Allegheny 2-1 (20-25, 21-25, 25-11). Their overall record of 4-5 put them in third place in their pool Only two teams advanced to Saturday's semifinals.
“We had an opportunity to beat Parkland, and we had the opportunity to advance by beating North Allegheny but ended up losing both,” coach Justin Fee said. “We fought hard and played well at times, but a few parts of our game were off the entire day.”
The Falcons struggled with their serving game. They had 32 service errors in Friday’s three matches combined.
“That was one of our strongest points all season,” Fee said. “That was a little disappointing, but it happens sometimes.
“You just don’t want it to happen on the opening day of states.”
The Falcons, according to Fee, never could recapture the form that allowed them to sweep Central York in Tuesday night’s opening round match.
“We were in these games, but we were definitely not playing our best volleyball,” the Falcons’ coach said. “We started forcing the ball to a couple of our hitters. We weren’t clicking offensively.”
Junior Jeremy Rhoads had a big day at the net, finishing with 40 kills and a dazzling .458 hitting efficiency. He also had a team-high six aces to go along with 20 digs and six blocks. Noah Prickett added 34 kills, 14 blocks, eight digs, three assists and one ace.
Defensive libero Justin Mueller had 26 digs, setting a single season record for digs at Pennsbury with 182. He passed Chris O’Neil (’04) with 174.
Joe Yasalonis had 19 kills, 10 blocks, six digs and one ace while B.J. Cummings had a team-high 18 blocks to go along with 11 kills. Dom Tricoche had seven kills, six blocks and one dig.
Setter Ryan Burns had 96 assists as well as 13 digs, three aces, one kill and one block. John Dunn had 14 digs.
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