The Emmaus boys volleyball team was very excited to play for the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Volleyball Championship last Thursday evening.

The fact that the Hornets were also facing rival Parkland in the first ever EPC final made them that much more adrenalized for the moment.

But, when things were all said and done, Emmaus head coach Ken Dunkle and his Hornets had to experience the same end result as when they faced Parkland during the regular EPC season. This time, Parkland walked off the court with a 25-19, 25-14, 25-20 victory to take home the league championship trophy.

"They get pumped up to play Parkland," said Dunkle. "Certainly more so tonight than during the season. I'm much happier with their performance tonight than last time we played them as I thought we were more consistent throughout the match.

"We've still got some stuff to clean up. We had too many unforced errors, mental mistakes that you can't afford to give points away to a team like that. Hopefully we can tighten up a couple of things and in a week or so we get to see them again at districts."

Emmaus opened District 11/4 tournament play last week as the No. 2 seed with a 3-0 win over Delaware Valley. The Hornets advanced to take on No. 6 Whitehall on Tuesday (after Press deadline). A win Tuesday would put the Hornets in Thursday's district title game against either top-seeded Parkland or No. 5 seed Nazareth, which also played Tuesday.

In last week's EPC title match, the adrenaline of playing in the championship limelight fueled the Hornets' fire in the first game. After Parkland took a quick 3-0 lead, the Hornets forced eight ties and nine lead changes before Parkland captured the first game.

In the second game, Emmaus had before Parkland knotted the game up for a second time at 9-9. After that, the Trojans' Andrew Hillman helped his team steal the momentum back and they didn't let it go for the rest of the match.

Hillman served three aces in a matter of six serves to help the Trojans build a 16-10 lead before the next side out.

"I think we got a little intimidated by Andrew's serve and I think we bled a lot of points out because of that," Dunkle said. "His jump serve is simply brutal. So, that's a tough one for anyone to get. We definitely lost a lot of momentum in the second set."

It was the Hornets' Pat Bryan, EPC MVP, who put down a kill to stop the pain of Hillman's serve.

In the final game, the Hornets came back to life a little bit forcing six ties and seven lead changes. But, it just was a little too late as the Hornets only took the lead twice throughout what turned out to be the final game.

Once Parkland unlocked a 10-10 tie thanks to another Emmaus miscues, the Trojans went on to take advantage of several more Hornets' miscues to build a bit of a comfortable lead.

"Every time we play Emmaus, they're always emotional," Trumbauer said. "They always leave everything out on the court. We needed to kind of match that. Early on in games like this, that tends to happen. It's just a natural thing for kids to do in big games. So, once we got over the hump and made a couple of runs."