Pennsbury & Central Bucks West will both be competing in the PIAA 6A Tournament Wednesday.
Pennsbury & Central Bucks West – both winners of their respective SOL divisions – are heading to the PIAA 6A State Tournament. For the Falcons, it is their first trip since 2019 while the Bucks are advancing to states for the first time in program history.
Fourth time is the charm for Falcon seniors
They’d had quite enough of finishing second.
For three straight years, this year’s seniors were part of Falcon teams that finished second to Council Rock South. This year, they changed that trend and captured the SOL Patriot Division title.
“Since freshman year, being surrounded by a bunch of upperclassmen and seeing the expectations they had every year really has fueled me to keep pushing hard every year,” Pennsbury senior Madara Bungs said. “This is a bigger senior class, and we all really want to do well and want to close out our season with a really high note.
“Between that and just the fact that this season all the seniors are so dedicated and I just don’t want to lose. I want to keep playing hard. I want to have something for Pennsbury to remember us by.”
This year’s squad has assured itself a spot among the program’s best with its division title and the program’s first state berth since 2019.
“We’ve all been putting in the work over the years, and it finally paid off,” senior Violet Rowbotham said. “I feel like when we first came in, we started a really great program, but the team aspect wasn’t fully there. Not everybody wanted it, and I feel like our team now everyone wants the same thing.
“Everybody wants to do well, everybody wants to be there for each other on and off the court, and that helps a lot, and it’s shown this year with us playing so much better.”
Even before the season started, coach Rob Burns and his assistants held a ‘Senior Leadership Retreat’ at The Picklr in Newtown.
“Coming from the volleyball perspective, it helps that our senior group has experience at all levels of volleyball and has been playing together for years,” Burns said. “Our main focus before the season started was that talent only gets you so far. We had raw, tough conversations centered around being humble, hungry, and (people) smart. We built trust through vulnerability.
“We knew the talent and skill was already there: up and down the roster. We have girls who come in when someone is injured and play very well. When you have that much talent, you turn your head towards the character of the team. We believe that has been the key with this group. They support each other through it all and stay level-headed during the highs and the lows. When a storm comes, our roots run deep.”
The seniors are at the heart of this year’s talented squad. Bungs led the Falcons at the net with 326 kills (and a .259 hitting percentage), and she also was second in digs with 204. Senior Reagan Perate led the defense with 237 digs and also led the Falcons’ service game with 65 aces. She was second with 308 kills.
Junior setter Katie Mishler dished out 685 assists and was second on the team with 52 aces. She also had 115 digs. Junior Emma Chung contributed 192 digs, and sophomore Emilia Guzdziol added 125 kills.
There have been milestones galore for this year’s squad. Bungs is the program’s all-time leader in kills, Perate surpassed the 500-assist and 500-dig mark, and Olivia Jedynak reached the 100-aces mark for her career.
“Over the last few years, some of our underclassmen have really taken on a big role on the team,” Bungs said. “Even starting freshman year, there have been some underclassmen who really take on a big role, and I think that’s really important just to help keep the program going even after the upperclassmen and senior leave.”
The seniors have made a conscious effort to include the underclassmen.
“We do this thing where it’s bigs and littles – the upperclassmen will choose a younger classmate to guide and be a leader for them,” Perate said.
As a result, the camaraderie between grades is unmistakable.
“I’m really close to the seniors, and playing with them is such a privilege,” Mishler said. “They have shown what it feels like to have such great team chemistry and they make it so easy to just have fun playing games.”
“I think the key to our team is just the trust we have in each other,” junior Emma Chung said. “To look at every other girl on the court, and they just know me better than I know myself, especially as an athlete, and they build just a sense of community and comfort on the court that you don’t get from other people. Everyone’s just so comfortable.”
Emilia Guzdziol, a sophomore, has been a major contributor, and she can attest to that.
“It’s been really fun to have such a good season and to be around all these really good players, and I’ve been able to look up to them,” Guzdziol said. “I feel like the older girls took me under their wing.”
The fun – they say – doesn’t begin and end on the volleyball court.
“We’re all very close,” Perate said. “We do a good amount of preseason bonding. We went to the pickleball courts this year. We go out for food together, we have sleepovers all the time. There’s not a day where I’m not with these girls – even on weekends.”
The end result has been one of the program’s most successful seasons in memory, and it’s not over yet.
“Coming into the season, we had high expectations from the beginning, and a few weeks into the regular season, we kind of all took a step back and relaxed and made sure we enjoyed the regular season and focused on making sure we worked together as a team,” Bungs said. “Just the realization that we don’t have anything guaranteed – that’s been kicking in.”
Up next: Pennsbury will travel to District 12 champion Central High School for an opening round match in the PIAA 6A State Tournament on Wednesday (5pm).
Bucks earn a spot in program record books
There are turnarounds, and then there’s Central Bucks West’s jump from a team that didn’t compete in the postseason last year to this year earning the program’s first ever trip to the state tournament.
“Coming into the season off of how our season ended last year when we didn’t make it to (districts), I didn’t expect anything really high where our team would go,” senior Kya Lynch said. “We had a lot of new talent coming in, and through practicing and everything, we really showed what our team was capable of.
“In the middle of the season, I think we realized we had the opportunity to really become a strong team and go far in the playoffs.”
On Wednesday night, the Bucks will be in new territory when they travel to Hempfield High School for an opening round state game.
“It’s always a blessing to go as far as they have,” West coach Todd Miller said. “They’ve put a ton of work into this, made some things happen in some difficult situations. Just continued to build and work well together as a team.
“I can honestly say that this is probably one of the better chemistry years I’ve seen out of a team. They care deeply about each other and work hard for each other because of it. When you get that kind of cohesiveness – we have a shirt that has the word ‘Family’ across the front, and then it gives the definition in the back. It says – ‘It’s not always blood, not always related, but always there for one another.’”
And that, according to the veteran coach, has one of the keys to this team’s success.
“I think that’s something they’ve just really grabbed hold of, they’ve all leaned into it together,” he said. “They’re always picking each other up. When you do something like that, you build something special.”
Miller won’t get an argument from his players.
“I think a lot of our successes throughout the season have really branched off because of our chemistry,” senior Katina Adelizzi said. “I don’t think we would have gotten this far if we didn’t all play as a unit together.
“I think the key was just being welcoming to everyone at the beginning of the season. Us upperclassmen have been playing with each other for a while, so we’ve already built a relationship, but we have a lot of younger girls on the team too, and I think we just went into it with understanding – when we came onto the team as freshmen and sophomores, we were nervous. So, it just comes from understanding that and just treating everyone with simple respect.”
There was no grand plan, according to Adelizzi.
“It’s the little things that really helped with that, and it’s a slow process,” she said. “None of us were best friends from the get-go. It’s like building trust with each other on and off the court.
“We do team dinners, and we go to football games together. It’s not just on the court.”
Senior Emma Shank has been teammates with both Lynch and Adelizzi on the club circuit in addition to playing high school volleyball with them.
“Out of my four years playing in high school, this has definitely been the closest team we’ve had,” she said. “Us four seniors – me, Keeley (Fialkowski), Katina and Kya – this year, we’ve been doing some away from practice bonding.
“I remember a couple years ago, me and Keeley both said – when we’re seniors, we’re gonna make an effort to just be a happy team because I think we all know that you play better when you’re happy on the court and love the people around you, so we do definitely try to make it that way, and it’s been great.”
Shank went on to credit Ryan Alu, who played volleyball at West and went on to compete at the collegiate level before joining the coaching staff.
“He gave us a whole speech in the beginning about how when there’s seniority or any type of thing on a team that makes it seem like others are above people – it’s never gonna work, it’s never gonna be a good team,” Shank said. “You’re never going to work together, and I think we all took that pretty seriously.”
Make no mistake about it, the Bucks also have their share of talent. Lynch surpassed the 1,000-career kill mark and is the program’s all-time leader, shattering the previous mark by over 700 kills with 1,683. The Rider-bound senior enters Wednesday’s state title game with 758 kills this season, averaging 7.7 kills a set. She also has 55 aces, 279 digs and 32 blocks this season.
Shank, who has 883 assists this season, surpassed the 1,000-assist mark this fall. Ashlyn Kear has 628 career digs – 358 this season.
If there was a defining point in the season, it came – according to Lynch – early on when the Bucks won five consecutive matches in three sets.
“That was pretty crazy for us especially coming out of last season,” she said. “So I think that was kind of the turning point and we were like – we can really focus on practicing every day and do everything we can to make it as far as we can.”
The results speak for themselves.
“Me and Kya talk about this a lot,” Shank said. “We didn’t think this season was going to be this awesome. We actually had not the highest expectations, but we were proven very wrong. We’re doing so great this year, and I think it really just come down to the relationships we have on this team.”
Shank says the players drew on their own experiences to help lead the way.
“Especially as freshman, there was a lot of seniority on our team, and we were scared to speak up or anything,” she said. “So, we really tried to make an effort to make everyone feel comfortable, the freshmen especially.”
Not to be forgotten is the fact that the Bucks also won the program’s first SOL Colonial Division title in three years.
“I think all of us went into the season just hoping to connect more as a team because in past years we haven’t really had that connection,” Adelizzi said. “So, this year was really about just making sure we’re not playing for ourselves, but we’re playing for each other. And just focusing on one game at a time.
“I started my season as a junior with an ankle injury, so the beginning of the season I wasn’t (playing), so it was kind of hard coming back from it. So, coming into this season with such a great team and amazing girls and amazing coaches and getting this far – I couldn’t ask for a better team.”
Making the experience even better is they’ve had fun doing it.
“We’re all in a group chats,” Shank said. “On our Instagram account, we’ll do a game day post and post all the funny pictures we have of the team or funny plays in the game. I think that actually brings us together as a team.”
And that unity has taken the Bucks to new heights.
“When you look at them and see the effort and what they’re putting into this – you hope this for them,” Miller said. “You really do because when you have a group that does something like what they’ve done, you really want to see it culminate with something like this.”
Up next: Central Bucks West will travel to District 3 champion Hempfield for an opening round match in the PIAA 6A Tournament Wednesday (6pm).
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