The race for the final spot in the EPC playoffs was a close ride for Liberty, but ultimately the Hurricanes didn’t have enough of a punch to crack the top six for this week’s tournament.

Easton (11-6) grabbed the final spot in the tourney with their win over Bethlehem Catholic on Monday, leaving Liberty on the outside.

However, Liberty’s two recent losses to Easton in the span of 10 days played a major role in the Rovers edging Liberty out for the sixth seed.

“Easton has been able to edge us with more timely hitting,” said head coach Mike Zile. “The serve and serve-receive game was fairly comparable in our matches. Easton was able to terminate the ball sooner especially when it mattered late in the games.”

The Hurricanes returned to action last Thursday after a nine-day layoff for COVID precautions and Zile admitted the time off did impact the play on the court, even though they came back and swept Freedom in their first contest back.

However, last Friday’s loss to Easton might have been more of an indicator of how time off affected the team.

“The layoff has affected timing and being able to build up the offense that we are running,” Zile said. “The reps are limited and we are having to make adjustments by telling players what to do as opposed to working on it more extensively in the gym with reps.”

Liberty appears to be the only team in the city that will be moving onto districts, which get underway next week, as Bethlehem Catholic (3-10) and Freedom (7-12) are both out of the postseason races.

It was a disappointing campaign for the Patriots, who narrowly missed out on a postseason berth.

“Unfortunately I don’t believe we ever hit our stride as a team,” said head coach John Yanek. “Some individuals improved, but we did not solely as a team. We had at least three chances at making districts. The Easton five set loss, the Liberty five set loss and the Nazareth five set loss. We just didn’t have enough to finish the match. We had much more potential than we showed. We do, however, return all starters next year. We were young and inexperienced and sometimes I believe we used that as an excuse to just get by and not always play our best. Hopefully, we will learn from this and come back stronger next season.”