Liberty hasn’t lost a game this season in five matches on the volleyball court, but that run probably came to an end Tuesday night when the Hurricanes took on Parkland in a battle of undefeated East Penn Conference teams.

The results of that contest were past Press deadlines, but it surely was going to be the ’Canes (5-0, 4-0) most pressing test of the season against the returning state champion Trojans (5-0, 4-0).

Head coach Neiad Ammary knows that the numbers look good on paper for his team’s start, but that there’s still plenty of work to do for this year’s group.

“While we are undefeated so far, we haven’t had a perfectly smooth start to the season,” he said. “It wasn’t until the second set of our fourth match against Freedom that we put all of our starters on the court together, and even then, Logan Priestas was playing with the flu. We’ve had multiple starters missing from most competitions, due to a variety of issues. Overall, we are pleased with our record, but we have not yet come close to reaching our full potential.”

That came to the forefront against Parkland on Tuesday, as the Trojans also entered the match without having a blemish in their league schedule, including a three-game sweep over state ranked Pennridge last week.

“They are every bit as good as their top ranking suggests,” said Ammary of the Trojans top AAA ranking in the state. “We have a few players battling illnesses, so I’m not sure if we’ll be at full strength. I hope to see our team play relaxed, focused, and fearless. We have the athleticism to match up with them, so we’ll need to take the fight to them and execute at a high level consistently throughout the match if we hope to win. We can’t allow our nerves to get the best of us just because Parkland is the reigning state champion. One thing I have always tried to teach my players is to embrace, and even seek, adversity. We’re fortunate that we have the opportunity to play the top ranked team in the state. We’ll either win or we’ll learn. We can’t lose in a match like this.”

While Liberty hasn’t had problems picking up wins, the same can’t be said for Freedom (1-4, 1-2) or Bethlehem Catholic (1-3, 1-3).

The Pates look to get on track this week when they take on Allen (0-3) and Nazareth (1-3).

Becahi picked up their first win of the season in a three-game sweep over Allen and the Hawks hope to continue that momentum this week with Thursday’s contest against Northampton (0-5).

Liberty closes out the week on Thursday against the Canaries.