Perfection is all but impossible to attain in the world of competitive sports.
The Pennridge volleyball team came mighty close in its 3-1 win over top-ranked Pennsbury in last Thursday night’s District One AAA championship match.
“I watched that tape until three in the morning when I got home,” Pennsbury coach Justin Fee said. “I put it on DVD and watched it in slow motion three times.
“It was just little, little minor detail things – like block timing and a couple of other little things. Pennridge played unbelievable. They did a really nice job.”
“All the credit goes to them - Pennridge played absolutely unbelievably,” Falcon senior Jeremy Rhoads said. “There aren’t a lot of other teams in the state – I don’t know if I could name one - that has two all-state players like Pennridge does (Zech States and Austin Jacoby).
“They played great. We made some mistakes, but all the credit goes to them.”
Prior to this week, Pennridge’s highest ranking in the PVCA Class AAA state poll was 10 – a spot it occupied for two weeks prior to the district title match. The Falcons, meanwhile, owned the number one spot for most of the season.
In this week’s poll, the Rams have moved up to the fifth spot while the Falcons have fallen to number three behind North Allegheny and Central York. No one is too concerned about rankings these days since the rankings will take care of themselves as the state tournament plays itself out this week.
(1-1)Pennridge vs. (3-3) Cumberland Valley at Council Rock South, 7 p.m.
Playing next to a pair of all-state outside hitters in Zech States and Austin Jacoby, middle hitters Mike Shenk and Erik Moyer could easily get lost in the shuffle.
But anyone remotely familiar with Pennridge volleyball recognizes the key roles the two middles have played in the success of this year’s squad.
“When a lot of teams look at us, they see Zech and Austin,” coach Dave Childs said. “They’re very good players, and they should get recognized, but Erik and Mike are hitting just as well – if not better – percentage-wise, and that’s big for us.
“They won’t get a lot of sets, but they need to put the ones they get away, and they do that. That’s a big thing for us.”
In Thursday’s district title match, Shenk and Moyer combined for 12 kills and 10 blocks with Shenk delivering a game-high seven blocks and four kills.
“Really, it’s just about – before the play starts, knowing who the hitters are and going up with the hitter and putting a block up,” Shenk said. “Even getting a soft touch on it makes it a lot easier for the defense to dig.”
Moyer, meanwhile, had eight kills and three blocks.
“We’re just supposed to put balls away when we have a chance,” he said. “We’re like a secret weapon, almost a distraction from Austin and Zech.
“Just getting a touch on any ball can make a huge difference when it comes to passing it, so we just try and get a lot of contact to help out the back row.”
Their styles, according to Childs, are vastly different.
“They are both good athletes, which is good to have in the middle,” the Rams’ coach said. “Mike’s a little bit quicker. He’s not as tall – he’s about six feet tall, but he plays a lot bigger than that. He has collected 16 blocks in our three playoff games. He’s very active at the net, and he plays bigger than what he is.
“Erik is 6-3 – he’s not huge, but he’s very efficient. He’s hitting over .500 for the year, which is really good. He has less than 20 hitting errors on the season. He’s just a solid blocker. He’s solid – he doesn’t do anything flashy, but he’s doesn’t make mistakes.”
Talk to either middle hitter, and it’s clear that height is secondary.
“We don’t get as many opportunities as Zech and Austin, but we have to be big at the net, so if we’re not getting kills, we want to get blocks,” Shenk said.
“We just have a really athletic team,” Moyer said. “A lot of us are able to jump pretty high and try and make up for it in a lot of other ways.”
The thrill of winning the district title has not worn off for Shenk or his teammates.
“It feels amazing,” Shenk said. “We went the whole season pretty confident that we were going to get to the district championship and face off with Pennsbury again.
“Going into the game, we knew we had a shot. It was just going to take everybody on the team coming together and playing their best. Once it happened, it was amazing.”
A win over Cumberland Valley in Tuesday’s opening round state match separates the Rams from a trip to Penn State University this weekend.
“That’s our main goal right now,” Shenk said. “We need to come to play tomorrow and win that match.”
(1-2) Pennsbury vs. (11-1) Whitehall at Louis E. Dieruff High School, 7 p.m.
Jeremy Rhoads stands somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-11 or 6-0.
“I’ll go with six foot,” the Pennsbury senior said.
You can throw height out the window where Rhoads is concerned. The Falcons’ senior outside hitter can jump out of a building. Or at least it must feel that way to opponents as they watch one of his kills go straight down to an open space on the court.
How does Rhoads do it?
“Hopefully, athleticism can account for that and just hard work,” he said. “You don’t have to necessarily be the tallest player. You have to have a good head for the game and outsmart taller players.”
Rhoads is the all-time leader in games played at Pennsbury. The senior outside hitter came into the program boasting some experience – he’d learned the game by playing with his older brother Chris (Class of ’07), and when standout Ryan Bigos suffered a shoulder injury, Rhoads saw varsity playing time as a freshman serving for the Falcon star.
The senior outside hitter is second all time in career aces and is third on the all-time career dig list, and he’s done all of this without fanfare.
“He just quietly and consistently does what we expect him to do,” coach Justin Fee said. “He’s not the biggest kid in the world, and he never has been, but he’s come up very, very big in all of our huge matches. In district games, state playoff games – he’s come up very, very big and often leads us in stats and hitting percentage.
“I talked to the Hempfield coach, and he’s so impressed with Jeremy. He said, ‘Pound for pound – Jeremy’s the best player in the state,’ and coming from a guy like that who has all kinds of experience and seen so many great players, that’s a pretty big compliment.
“He does everything with perfect form in terms of hitting, jump serves and passing. He’s done a lot for us over the last four years.”
According to Rhoads, the Falcons have to forget about their loss to the Rams in the district title game.
“It was the district championship, it was a big game, so obviously, it’s always going to be in the back of our heads that we could have won three straight district championships,” he said. “But when you look at it in the whole scheme of things, that game really doesn’t mean too much other than a gold trophy. We just have to hopefully forget about that and realize now if we lose we’re done.
“With that number one ranking, every team in the state is going to play their absolute best against us. Even losing the game and dropping in the rankings could maybe help us.”
Fee is equally optimistic as his team heads into Tuesday night’s opening round game against Whitehall.
“If history repeats itself, we have always played our best at states after losing the district championship,” the Falcons’ coach said. “We have another big match ahead of us that we have to focus on. We can’t be thinking about what we did or didn’t do against Pennridge.”
(1-3) Souderton vs. (3-1) Central York at Penn Manor, 7 p.m.
When Brad Garrett looked at his varsity roster going into the season, the Souderton coach didn’t see a whole lot of familiar faces.
“With the only people coming back being Luke (Pinto) and Christian (Benner), we knew we had a couple of pieces in place, but we also knew we had to have more people step up,” the Indians’ coach said.
Enter Jeff Bishop, a 6-4 senior basketball player who played a key role in the Indians’ Continental Conference championship run and trip to the state playoffs this winter.
“Jeff was definitely the piece that put us over the top,” Garrett said. “We didn’t know what to expect from him considering he had never played, and to have him come through like he did is one of the pieces that made us get to where we are.”
Bishop stood tall for the Indians at the middle of the net. What he lacked in volleyball knowledge, he more than made up for with his natural athletic talent.
“I have enjoyed it a lot, but I’m still learning the game,” he said. “There are calls made that I don’t know what I did, or everyone is cheering and I’ll be sitting there like, ‘Oh, okay.’
“It’s been crazy. I’m still learning and trying different things – what works for me. I guess I don’t even notice how big some of the games are because I’m so confused by what I’m doing out there trying to learn everything.”
It was Bishop’s huge block with the scored knotted 24-24 in the fourth game of Souderton’s third place game against Council Rock North on Thursday that vaulted the Big Red to a crucial 26-24 win in game four and a 3-1 win in the match.
“It’s been so exciting,” Bishop said. “I came out to some of the games last year, and when I watched those games, that’s when I knew I wanted to play - in those close games where every point counted and you celebrated after every point.
“When I got that block against Council Rock, that’s exactly what I was playing for – a big play where everybody could get excited and you could change the game.”
Interestingly, Bishop had played tennis in spring for the past three years.
“I decided I wanted to change it up, and I thought volleyball might be a fun sport that maybe I would be good at,” he said. “I was always told that I would be good in volleyball because I was tall and a little bit athletic.”
Bishop went to two open gyms to test the waters and decided to give it a try.
“I actually missed the first week of tryouts because of basketball,” he said. “Garrett had watched me play a little bit and knew I had potential, so he decided to keep me.”
It didn’t take Garrett long to recognize that he’d found a player in Bishop.
“He’s very coachable, and if you tell him something one time, he’s got it,” the Indians’ coach said. “He’s always looking for ways to get better.
“He’s an athlete, and he just has a good awareness of what’s going on around him and always seems to find himself in the right place. The block against Council Rock North at 24-24 was pretty timely. He’s one of those players that seem to be in the right place at the right time all the time.”
Volleyball isn’t part of Bishop’s plans for the future – he will be playing basketball at Philadelphia Biblical next year, but he wouldn’t have wanted to miss the experience he had playing for the volleyball squad this spring.
According to Garrett, Bishop and the Indians were playing their best volleyball down the stretch.
“I think what helped us down the stretch was Luke wasn’t 100 percent, Jake (Shoemaker) went out with an injury, and Christian went out with an injury, and it forced the other six or eight guys on the team to step up and carry us in the second half of the season,” the Indians’ coach said. “When we got everybody healthy the week before districts, we were playing our best.”
On Tuesday night, the Indians take on a Central York squad that is not only the District 3 champion but is also ranked second in the latest state poll.
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