The Parkland High School girls volleyball team was undefeated heading into the final four at the PIAA playoffs last week. But Garnet Valley had a better night offensively and handed the Trojans their first loss, winning in the semifinals 21-25, 25-20, 25-22, 25-20 to advance to the final.

Parkland finished 24-1 overall and won both the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and District 11 4A tournaments.

“I think we had a great season,” said Trojan head coach Krause. “We progressed over the course of the year. We set up our schedule to be very challenging. Our three tournaments consisted of teams that had great postseason runs. We exacted revenge on Pope John Paul by defeating them in the finals and winning our tournament. We played at the Little Lion Invitational in State College. Many teams that made postseason runs in the state participated in that tournament. Our teams showed a lot of character getting on a bus at 5:00 a.m., traveling to State College, playing in 17 sets and winning the tournament. That victory showed our team was ready for the postseason challenges. Scarlett Jago became our all-time digs leader. Maggie Smith reached 2,000 career assists. Elena Pursell was an EPC Volleyball Scholar Athlete. There were a lot of individuals that had success, which led to our team overall finding success.”

The Trojans’ offense that had been its strength all season had an off night against the Jaguars (26-1). Parkland made 32 hitting errors on Tuesday night and finished with a hitting percentage of .097. Ava Adamson finished with 19 kills. Pursell and Alli Reimer added 11 and 10 kills, respectively. Smith and Izzy Fekula each had 16 digs, while Smith contributed 38 assists.

“We had a goal of improving every day to allow us to qualify for the state tournament,” Krause said. “The girls embraced the learning of how to scout their opponents, develop a strategy to use during the match and learn how to implement that strategy in practice to prepare for the opponent. Then getting into a position to win a gold medal at EPC’s created more energy. After we won EPC’s, the girls felt confident they understood how to make adjustments over the course of a match.

“The best part of the district journey was watching team members talk with each other giving advice on what they are seeing the opponents doing. We had girls from the bench go to a teammate during timeouts to tell them different strategies that were working against different types of attacks by our opponents. Then seeing it all come together, it was one of the most rewarding experiences you can have as a coach. We felt very confident going into states. We were playing some of our best volleyball. The first two rounds of states, our team hit .430. We knew Garnet Valley had a different challenge. We played them hard. It was just unlucky we struggled with our offense. To get to where we finished, I am very proud of the hard work and commitment we had from all the players, managers and especially our assistant coaches.”

Parkland will graduate nine seniors, a group that has led the program to great success over the last four seasons.

“Luci Shellock, Alexa Bartman, Kamira Hoover, Harshini Mallipedhi, Scarlett Jago, Elena Pursell, Hannah Vrablik, Jackie Fekula and Ava Adamson were our leaders,” said Krause. “They all undertook roles to help this group understand how to practice, how to handle their academics, how to carry themselves as young female athletes and how to be a great teammate. The seniors were role models for the younger players. They came into the gym with great attitudes. They were willing to help the younger players whenever they needed help in any area.”