The Whitehall and Northampton girls volleyball teams wrapped up their regular seasons by renewing their Cement Belt rivalry in Pete Schneider Gymnasium last Thursday. The K-Kids won in three sets, 25-9, 25-13, 25-13 to sweep the season series against the Zephyrs.

While Northampton jumped out to an early lead in the first set and never looked back, the second and third set started out evenly. The middle frame was even at 6-6 and the finale at 7-7, but in both of those situations the K-Kids went on runs keyed by the serves of the Hughes sisters.

Setter Molly Hughes sparked a 5-point streak in the second set and Morgan Hughes was at the center of a 6-point run in the third.

Whitehall head coach Victoria Bobyak lamented, “It’s been a theme for us. We come out confident, up, together with the intention to compete and then we lose the first set and it gets in our heads. Then we struggle to power through to the next set and keep the energy and confidence up.”

Northampton head coach Mike Holihan echoed the sentiment, “There’s a lot of potential on that Whitehall team. They hang with you for the first 10 points and then they lose confidence or focus. We’re able to take advantage of those situations. It felt good to win the match in three (sets).”

Keona Spooner led the Zephs with 4 kills. Grace Hana had 10 assists. Bailey Seibert chalked up 6 digs.

Payton Reuber and Naomi Nebiyou both had 10 kills for the K-Kids. Molly Hughes dished out 21 assists. Morgan Hughes led Northampton with 11 digs.

For Whitehall, their season came to an end with a 4-13 record. Using District XI’s Opponent Winning Percentage metric, the Zephyrs faced the toughest schedule in the district. Having 4 of the top 6 teams in the EPC in their division and playing them twice, plus having undefeated Liberty on the docket made for a difficult hill to climb.

With soccer moving away from the divisional format this season, it is fair to question whether the sports that still hold to the three-division format should adopt a similar round robin approach to scheduling conference games.

Northampton finished the regular season 13-5 and in a tie for third place in the EPC. After the tiebreakers were sorted out, they wound up seeded fifth in the league tournament. On Saturday, the team played at Bethlehem Catholic in the quarterfinals and were defeated 25-18, 25-14, 25-13.

The K-Kids will be in action next Thursday in the District XI 4A quarterfinals as the five seed. While the brackets and schedule will not be released until after the EPC championship on Saturday, it appears that Northampton will play at Emmaus. The Kids and Hornets split their regular season contests with both matches won by the road team.