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Northeastern sweeps Suburban for fifth straight district gold


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The Northeastern boys' volleyball team won its fifth straight District 3 Class 2A championship on Friday night, sweeping York Suburban, 3-0. 

The Bobcats put up a dominant performance to earn a 25-18, 26-24, 25-14 victory at Dallastown High School. 

Northeastern controlled the match from start to finish.

“We have not played a singular match from point one to point 25 in the entirety of the best-of-five situation all season like we did there," Northeastern head coach Matt Wilson said. "And we’ve been harping on that and waiting and waiting. Tonight was that first real, start-to-finish, really solid championship-level match.”

The team caught fire from the service line in Game 1 and closed on a 16-8 run, taking a 9-9 score and finishing with a 25-18 victory.

"That hasn’t been our forte all season, to be honest with you," Wilson said. "We preached pretty hard last night and tonight, we really needed to bring a better level from the service side of things. Take the game to them a little more instead of waiting for it to develop. I thought we attacked much better.”

After falling behind 9-4 to start Game 2, York Suburban turned it up a notch.The Trojans came back to tie it, 13-13, and eventually took a 23-20 lead. For a moment, it looked like a York Suburban would tie the match.

But two double-contact calls against the Trojans tied the score at 23-23, and Northeastern went on to take the second game.

From there, it was a runaway, with the Bobcats dominating Game 3 and taking home the district title.

"In the huddle in the timeout, we just decided we’re not going to give up," said freshman Nate Wilson. "We just kept fighting and that’s when we play like a championship team. Not getting down on ourselves and we wanted to get together as a team. That’s when we succeed."

Nate Eyster, who led the Bobcats with 11 kills Friday, said that never-say-die attitude comes from the team's head coach.

“He’s a major part of it. He drills it in over and over again to be confident and not to get down," Eyster said. "Not to beat each other up for our mistakes. He’s a major part in helping us win.”

The Bobcats have seven state championships on their resume and will look to continue building on that statistic starting in next week's PIAA tournament.

“He told us before the game to make your own dynasty," Eyster said of Matt Wilson's message going into Friday's title match. "Go out there and start your own tradition. That’s what we wanted to do and that’s what we did, I think.”

While Eyster led the way with 11 kills, Cole Brillhart had 10. Jacob Cheuvront added 38 assists while Brillhart recorded three blocks.

Jack Schultz had nine kills for York Suburban. Nate Bowman added six kills and 10 digs. Noah Chojnacki had 11 assists for the Trojans.

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Dallastown volleyball players explain how to perform a float serve.
Jim Seip, GameTimePA