It took a game to settle in. A game one that went well past the normal 25-point finish was won by Parkland, but only by two points.

The Trojans just needed that confidence to be able to settle in to the District 11 Class 4A semifinal. From there the top seeded Trojans took the next two games and won in straight sets over fourth seeded Emmaus 29-27, 25-17 and 25-18 last Tuesday night at Allen High School’s Sewards Gymnasium.

In a back-and-forth first game, Parkland took a three-point lead at 22-19, but gave up the next three as the Green Hornets tied it up at 22. Emmaus then held a lead twice at 26-25 and 27-26, but the Trojans were able to muster up a three-point rally to come from behind and take the set.

“I think the biggest thing was our service errors,” said head coach Mike Krause. “The girls were really excited at the start of the game, and you can see the adrenaline they were playing with kind of caused some mistakes early on. Our seniors were able to settle the team down, and they finished off an exciting game.”

Three of those seniors, Sam Graver, Morgan Sherwin and Megan Shaw have been around the block on the past few district championship teams, and once again showed up to play.

Graver finished with 22 kills and 18 digs. Sherwin added 7 kills and 5 digs, and Shaw had 16 digs.

“The younger girls follow our lead, and so we as seniors knew we had to get everyone settled down in that first game,” Graver said. “We won a few points, and the confidence went up and we just battled to the very end.”

The confidence sure did grow after that intense game one finish.

The Trojans held as much as a nine-point lead in game two, and were winning the points at the net with their precise and powerful hitting.

“We really were focused and wanted it more [in game two],” said Graver. “We used the strength of our hitting to our advantage and hit the spots that we needed to.”

It was more of the same in game three. Parkland led throughout the way, but by a slim margin. With the score at 14-13 in favor of the Trojans, they tallied six of the next seven points to take control and finish off the match.

“I’m proud of the girls for the way they finished off the match after starting kind of slow,” Krause said. “They’ve all been working so hard at practice since that loss in the conference final. We have some younger girls that haven’t played in these big games yet, but they are getting better and better.”

Parkland now will get a rematch with Liberty tonight in the final. The Hurricanes defeated the Trojans in the EPC final.