It is a substantial achievement to qualify for the EPC boys volleyball tournament as only six schools make it to the conference playoffs each year.

After a 1-year absence, Northampton took its place among the contending sextet as the sixth seed. That set up a road match with third-seeded Parkland last Thursday.

The K-Kids put up a solid effort but fell to the Trojans in straight sets 25-17, 25-19, 25-17.

Head coach Sue Arndt summed up the match, “We went in with a game plan and executed it. We have that tendency where we play, play, play, and then in the middle of the game, we get kind of stagnant, maybe stuck in a rotation. In the first set we were right with them, and then they got ahead 6, 7 points.”

A similar pattern emerged in the second and third sets. Northampton led 8-5 early in the second set before Parkland went on a six-point run from which the Kids never recovered.

In the final set, the K-Kids led 10-9 and were still within 16-17 late in the game before the Trojans started scoring in bunches to close out the match.

“They (Parkland) kept getting the ball off the floor,” explained Arndt. “We counted at least 6 times where we thought the ball was going down, and it’s not. They have a defense that doesn’t quit. I’m not disappointed with how we played. Obviously, you always want to win, but I’m not disappointed because we executed the game plan the way we needed to.”

Parkland and Whitehall won their semifinals against Freedom and Emmaus respectively and will face off tonight for the EPC title and the top seed in the district tournament. This means that Emmaus is locked into the third seed and will host Northampton on Tuesday in the quarterfinals.

The EPC named its All-Star teams last week and the Konkrete Kids’ two captains, Kieren Lieb and Caden Dempsey both were honored. Lieb earned a 2nd Team All-Conference nod as a middle hitter and Dempsey was named 3rd Team setter.