Freedom’s volleyball team needed to regain some momentum and confidence after dropping matches to Parkland and Nazareth in successive fashion.

The Pates were able to get that cure with back-to-back wins over Bethlehem Catholic and Dieruff last week to push their mark to 7-3 heading into another big week of East Penn Conference action.

Freedom (8-3) has continued to hold their ground in the middle tier of the EPC powers and the wins last week proved to be big for head coach John Yanek as well.

“Those two wins were big for us, because they were part of our road to districts,” said Yanek. “We have several players new to the line up due to the injury and the way we are running our offense. Those new starters are playing big right now and adding that spark we need.”

The Pates spark will be tested this week in a slate of five contest, which kicked off on Monday in their sweep [25-17, 25-23, 25-21] against Easton (6-4).

Then they face a real test on Wednesday against Whitehall (9-1) before matches with Pocono Mountain East (0-9), Northampton (7-3) and Wyoming Valley West (4-5).

This week’s results be important for the Pates quest at grabbing a favorable District 11 playoff seed down the road.

“This week is actually huge, because we have five matches in six days,” Yanek said. “We need three more wins to secure a berth in districts and actually are still alive for the EPC playoffs. Easton and Northampton would be bad losses for us, because it slows our run to districts and would eliminate our chance at EPC playoffs.”

Bethlehem Catholic (4-5) has dropped three straight matches to Northampton, Freedom and Emmaus and now look to get back on track in a pivotal matchup with Liberty on Wednesday. The Hawks week doesn’t get any better when they close it out against a tough Nazareth (7-4) squad.

Liberty (6-4) shocked Parkland Monday night in five games [19-25, 21-25, 27-25, 25-15, 15-13] and are hoping for wins over Becahi and Dieruff (4-7) this week to continue a run toward a qualifying district berth.