Freedom’s volleyball team has shown signs of improvement each week, but are the Pates on the verge of breaking the East Penn Conference’s upper tier?

Freedom comes into the week at 7-3 with their three losses coming against Easton, Northampton and Parkland. Each of those defeats came in five games, showing they can push upper tier teams like Northampton and Parkland.

“Against Easton, we felt we had control of the match, but Easton eventually took over and closed it out. The same scenario played out the week before with Northampton,” said head coach John Yanek. “We defeated the teams we were supposed to and learned from the losses that we will make mistakes, but it is the amount of mistakes that we make in a row that hurts us.”

In their loss to Parkland (25-19, 23-25, 24-26, 25-19, 15-9) last week, Freedom was able to take two straight middle sets before Parkland was able to take control of the match to close it out in five.

Those learning lessons will come in hand this week, as the Pates take on two of the top teams in the area with Emmaus (7-1) on Tuesday and Whitehall (9-0) on Thursday.

They close out the week with Bethlehem Catholic (1-9) on Friday.

“If we make mistakes, we must make up for them and then some,” said Yanek. “We need to improve upon our overall serve-receive consistency, deep defense, and get more touches on our blocks.”

Liberty (2-6) has struggled this season with team MVP Owen McFadden out for the season with a broken leg.

The Hurricanes hope they can muster some momentum this week with contests against Becahi on Tuesday, Dieruff (3-7) on Thursday and Allen (2-10) on Friday.

In between those matches, they get a contest with Emmaus on Wednesday, but the schedule this week lends well to Liberty’s chances to build themselves back toward the .500 mark.

Bethlehem Catholic is enduring a rebuilding campaign, as they’ve been swept in each of their losses.

The Hawks have Liberty, Allen and Freedom this week.