The Parkland High School girls volleyball team continued its strong play by taking out rival Emmaus in straight sets last Tuesday evening in the District 11 4A semifinals at Whitehall High School. Scores of the match were 25-11, 25-17 and 25-15.

“I thought we controlled their serve receive patterns well,” said head coach Krause. “Kamira Hoover had an exceptional night behind the service line with five aces and 26 service points. That is one of the best serving performances I have seen in my 19 years at Parkland. Kamira was placing a lot of pressure on their passers, making our transition from offense to defense pretty simple.

“Emmaus responded with a nontraditional offense placing shots and plenty of off-speed attacks. We were overreacting to some of those placement shots. Offensively, Elena was very effective out of the middle attacking with a variety of sets to keep the Emmaus defense off balance.”

Parkland improved to an unblemished 21-0 overall and has only lost one set all season. Krause credits the competitive nature of his team to how its been able to be so successful this season.

“I think our team has a collective determination to compete until the last point,” Krause said. “We had some challenging points where we were having a little challenge with the ball control. We traditionally have pretty fluid transitions from offense to defense or defense to offense. Last night we had some inconsistency in those transitions. That challenged our team with a little adversity. They continued to compete and work to resolve the challenges we created.”

Scarlett Jago finished with 17 digs. Ava Adamson led the attack with 11 kills, followed closely by Elena Pursell with 10. Allison Reimer added nine. Maggie Smith contributed 28 assists.

Parkland will now face the second seed Liberty in the final on Thursday night at Catasauqua High School. It is a rematch from the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference final two weeks ago where the Trojans won in straight sets.

“This is for the district title and an opportunity to play in the state tournament,” said Krause. “Volleyball only sends one team to the state tournament. This is quite the challenge because we have two teams playing for the opportunity to advance that are both ranked in the top-five in the state. This is a goal we planned for since the beginning of the season.

“We hope to play our best against a very good team that attacks the ball extremely well from the left side. We will be prepared and hope we play well. The seniors have their last opportunity, and I am sure our practice Wednesday will be enthusiastic and focused.”