Last Thursday, the Northampton boys volleyball team secured their most important win since the 2022 squad won the district title and made a run to the state semifinals when they took down Freedom in 5 sets to secure a district playoff berth after finishing 4-14 a year ago.

The schools split the first two sets with the K-Kids winning the opener 25-19 and the Patriots in control of the second 25-14.

The third set was a precursor of the drama yet to come as Northampton rebounded from an early deficit to hold multiple set points at 24-21. Freedom recovered to win the next 4 points to reach the cusp of stealing the set at 25-24. The Kids staved off that threat and another trailing 26-25 before rolling off 3 straight points to win 28-26.

The fourth set appeared it was going to play out in a similar fashion. Northampton led 24-22 prompting a Freedom timeout. This time, the Patriots’ late 4-point run was enough to give them the set at 26-24.

The K-Kids trailed 8-7 midway through the final race to 15 points before embarking on a 5-point barrage keyed by kills by Logan Berger and Caden Dempsey. Freedom came back to make it 12-11, but Northampton scored 3 of the final 4 points of the match to claim the set 15-12.

The punctuation mark was a Landon Nickischer kill, his 26th of the match, from the back row on the final point.

Blake Youwakim was second on the team with 9 kills, followed by Berger, Dempsey, and Kieren Lieb with 6. Dempsey also dished out 33 assists. Brad Chamberlain led the way with 33 digs, followed by Nickischer with 16. Anthony Roman, Lieb, and Berger all had 10. Berger also had 7 blocks.

Head coach Sue Arndt described the keys to the win, “I saw them respond out of mistakes and not put their heads down. They really responded to each other. Obviously we need Landon, but we also need to fire on all cylinders and we really got contributions from everywhere tonight. We had a game plan going into the match and they executed it very well.”

The win over Freedom also kept the K-Kids alive for a berth in the EPC tournament. They are currently tied with Nazareth and Freedom at 7-4 with one game left on the schedule. Unfortunately, Wednesday’s final games occurred after Press deadlines.

The key games were Northampton hosting Whitehall (13-3 overall), Freedom versus Liberty (11-4), and Nazareth against Easton (6-12). The Kids would win the head-to-head tiebreaker against Freedom but lose it to Nazareth. A 3-way tie would be complicated since Freedom beat Nazareth.

EPCs start on Tuesday. The district tournament starts May 21.