Freeport sweeps Corry in PIAA playoff opener
BUFFALO TWP — In the first round of the PIAA Class 2A playoffs, Freeport’s girls volleyball squad was looking to make a statement Tuesday night against District 10 runner-up Corry.
Junior outside hitter Sydney Selker’s emphatic spike sent the Beavers home in a set sweep — the scores being 25-10, 25-19, and 25-12.
Message heard, almost as loud as that final slap.
“That last point at the end is something we’ve been working on and that was quite an exclamation point,” Yellowjackets coach Tom Phillips said before diving into its Xs and Os.
“It’s a little bit of an X play where Josie (Russo) runs a slide to the pin and Syd comes inside for a two-ball in the middle,” he said. “It’s something that we experiment a lot with and fool around with. We like to show people different things.”
This deep into the campaign, Freeport (20-2) is still toying with things. The team has found the balance of playing mellow, but also completely zeroed in.
“Staying loose and having fun is very important,” Selker said. “Especially in the state playoffs, you don’t want to be too intense, because then you’re just going to mess up in the game.
“Whenever we do drills at practice, they’re fun, but they’re also very teachable and they’re very helpful for the actual game itself.”
It showed early in the initial game, when the ‘Jackets leapt out to a 6-0 lead and coasted, thanks in large part to an impressive defensive showing.
“The first game, we were just nervous,” Corry coach Kelly Goodsel said. “We’ve got a bunch of sophomores playing, we didn’t pass well, their size is intimidating, and it just kind of took us a while.”
More than half of the visitors’ points in that set came via Freeport errors.
“I don’t think the WPIAL championship match was one of our better games,” Phillips said. “We were a little bit stagnant. The things that we worked on yesterday at practice were staying in system and ... being aggressive the whole way through.”
The Beavers (13-4) didn’t go down without a fight. The score of the following set was tied at 10 before the ‘Jackets got kills from senior Cassidy Dell, sophomore Alaina Whitlinger, Russo, and Selker. Those points were part of a 6-1 run that propelled the hosts into the final game.
“That second set was definitely really tough to stay up,” Selker said. “I kind of knew that we were going to get the momentum to bring it for the third set ... If we would’ve ended up losing that set, you never know. The game could have shifted the other way.”
Freeport never trailed in the third set.
“We really wanted to finish it strong, so I think that we got a little comfortable in the beginning,” Selker said. “Then, towards the end, we just completely played our game. We stayed up.
“We wanted to end it with a banger.”
