Back on April 28, many inside the Whitehall High School gymnasium thought that the two best teams in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference were on that court. The atmosphere and high level of play during that midseason game showed signs of things to come. And three weeks later, Emmaus and Whitehall met again, this time for the league title.

Instead of the four-game, tightly contested match that was played in the regular season, the Green Hornets came away with an easier win, keeping their undefeated mark with a 25-18, 25-17, 25-17 victory last Wednesday night at Easton Area Middle School.

“I think it was a combination of things,” said Hornet head coach Ken Dunkle on the latest Whitehall victory. “We had the experience of the [last] Whitehall match and crowd under our belt. We got through it fine, so I think it was less of a factor this time. We also did a good job of not letting Whitehall get too much momentum. It’s something that we have worked hard on all season and we are seeing it pay off.

“Side out percentage is a measure of how successful you are at getting the ball back after a side out. Coaches like to see something around the 60 percent range. We had a side out percentage of 76 percent against Whitehall and 52 percent of those side outs that came on the first ball over the net.”

The Hornets’ front line was hard to stop. Junior James Haag (13 kills) and senior Carson Landis (11 kills) led the way. League MVP Cameron Parsons gave his teammates plenty of chances, tallying 37 assists.

“It’s a great feeling because we’ve fought hard for this,” Parsons said. “We knew we had all the assets, drive and mentality to win this. We’re going to keep firing heading into districts.”

For much of the three games, Emmaus (18-0 EPC) never trailed. Backed by their defense, the Hornets kept themselves out in front to stay. Senior libero Brendan Dunkle had nine digs, and Parsons had six.

“We set the goal in the beginning of the season to try to go deep in states,” said Ken Dunkle. “To that end, we have worked hard on focusing on what we need to be doing to be successful in reaching that goal.

“We are going to make mistakes. We need to understand that and not focus on playing perfect, but accept that mistakes are going to happen, especially if we are playing aggressively. This not only makes it easier to put the mistakes behind us as individuals, but it allows us to rely on our each other to help us recover from those mistakes. It takes the pressure off the individual athlete and spreads it across the team.”

The EPC championship was the first gold for the program since winning districts in 2013. The last league title was in 2012 in the Lehigh Valley Conference.

Emmaus earned the top seed in the District 2-11 Subregional tournament.

The Hornets defeated Easton in three games last Thursday in the quarterfinals and advanced to the semifinals against fifth seeded Nazareth (Tuesday).

The final is slated for Thursday night at Allen.