Slow start does not deter Dock

It took a little while for No. 1 Christopher Dock to start firing on all cylinders Tuesday night. However, despite their imperfect start they still cruised to a win in the opening round of the District 1/District 11-AA playoffs.

They used their superior net play to sweep No. 4 Southern Lehigh 3-0 (25-18, 25-20, 25-10) and secure a place in Thursday’s championship game with a trip to the PIAA playoffs on the line.

The Pioneers will face Bethlehem Catholic.

“We started off really slow,’’ said Dock head coach Trish Hoover. “They kept us out of system with some quirky stuff and usually we’re pretty good out of system but once we settled down and got into our rhythm we were able to turn things on and play how we know we can and should.’’

Despite winning the first two sets, Dock looked uncomfortable at times.

Their passing was inconsistent from their back-row early, and it allowed Southern Lehigh to win some points and make the sets closer than the Dock players would have liked.

Even though this was a playoff game, the Spartans came in with just one win on the season and were not expected to trouble the Pioneers much.

The turning point seemed to be when the Dock started to hit consistently out of the middle. Middle hitter Jason Landis had a huge second set, registering 5 of his 8 kills for the game and once that happened, the entire court opened up.

“The main reason we couldn’t get that middle down in the first set is our passing wasn’t there,’ said Hoover. “Once we started to hit those in the end of the second set and into the third it started to open up the outside and give us more options and everything else fell in place.’’

Dock knows it can play better moving forward, but the team is just excited to have the chance to move on and continue improving.

“The post season is a time for you to go up and improve as a team,’’ said setter Dylan Derstine. “We’re going to keep improving, keep pushing the bar higher and higher, and we know we can keep getting better.’’