Liberty and Freedom made a run to the EPC volleyball semifinals, but couldn’t bust through District 11 blue bloods, as they fell to Parkland and Emmaus respectively last week.

The Hurricanes (10-6) were able to take a game from Parkland, but lost in four (25-13, 25-21, 23-25, and 25-19), while Emmaus topped the Patriots in four games as well 25-21, 25-19, 18-25, and 25-22.

Liberty head coach Michael Zile reflected on what went right and wrong against Parkland (16-0) and where the team has to go now as they get ready for districts.

“I looked back at notes that I took after we played in the Koller Classic,” said Zile. “The tournament featured several state ranked teams and was a good measuring stick for us as we prepared for the second half of the season and EPCs.

“Our team defense has definitely improved. We are getting better at reading situations and closing the block faster. Our back row defense is improving with the up front consistency. We’ve gotten our lineup to a point where we are getting more consistency with the swings from the pins. We still need to develop more power with those swings to terminate sets sooner.

Parkland was getting a lot of transitional defense points on us early on. We got better with that as the match went on and were able to slow that down.”

Parkland and Emmaus square off on Wednesday night at Allen for the EPC title, in what could be a preview of the district championship.

Freedom (10-9) now gets to reset just like Liberty ahead of the District 11 tournament, where both teams hope they can make the right amount of tweaks to push for another run in the tournament.

“We will keep working on all of the above as we prepare for districts,” Zile said. “There are a lot of moving parts in this sport. Serving needs to be more consistent and more aggressive (as always). Hitting will always need to be more powerful and consistent. We need to touch up on serve receive and will need to keep working on the overall team defense.”