On Tuesday, the Northampton volleyball team traveled to Whitehall to take on the Zephyrs in the EPC quarterfinals. The two teams had just played the previous Wednesday and although Whitehall had won that match in straight sets, two of the sets had gone to the preposterous score of 29-27, giving the K-Kids some hope they could pull an upset.

However, it was not to be as the Zephyrs advanced to the EPC semifinals by the score of 25-19, 26-24, 25-12.

“We couldn’t put a ball down. To their credit, they picked up everything. We came in with a game plan and it was executed late in the first set and in the second set, but after that they just kind of said, ‘We can’t fight any more’ and kind of gave up,” lamented head coach Sue Arndt.

Arndt continued, “We need to be firing on all our cylinders. When serve receive is there something else is missing. When hitting is there, the defense isn’t there. We have to be true to who we are. We’re a team that plays well when we play together, but when we try to go one-on-one, it doesn’t work.”

The Kids definitely had some playoff jitters as they fell behind 4-11 prompting Arndt to take an early timeout. They won 6 of the next 8 points to cut the deficit to 10-13 but were never able to shrink the gap to fewer than 3 points during the rest of the set.

The second set saw a couple of key momentum swings. Midway through the score was knotted at 13, but Whitehall won the next 6 points to threaten to blow the match wide open. Northampton kept fighting and a 5-point Kids’ run from 21-17 down vaulted them into the lead. They held one set point at 24-23, but the Zephyrs won the next three points to claim the set and seemingly break the K-Kids’ spirit.

Whitehall went up 13-3 in the third set and never looked back.

Landon Nickischer, who was named a second-team EPC All-Star earlier in the week, led the team with 13 kills. Blake Youwakim had 7, but no other K-Kid had more than 2. Brad Chamberlain had 18 digs. Caden Dempsey had 13 assists. Cam Coccetti had 10.

The team is now off until May 21 when they will play in the quarterfinals of districts as the seven seed. The opponent will either be Parkland, if Emmaus wins the EPC tournament, or Emmaus if any other team wins it.