BURTON—No. 5 Kirtland opened the postseason with a 3-0 sweep of No. 4 Newton Falls.
The Hornets couldn’t pull off a second straight upset as top-seeded Berkshire earned a district championship berth with a 25-17, 25-17, 25-7 win on Wednesday.
“We’ve been working hard the last couple of weeks getting ready and I thought the girls did a great job,” said Kirtland coach Bob Schenosky. “The first two games were terrific. They did everything we asked them to do but we played a great team.”
Kirtland held a 7-6 lead in both of the first two sets but each time the Badgers rallied to pull away from the Hornets, to earn a 3-0 season sweep.
Berkshire also won both regular-season matchups.
“I thought we played them better than we did the first two times,” Schenosky said. “We got our hands on balls on the net, the back row hustle, that was the best movement I have seen out of the back. Every once in a while you run into a good team and we ended up on the lower end of it.”
Mistakes finally caught up to the Hornets in the third and final set.
“The third game was a tough game for us to fight through,” Schenosky said. “We made some mistakes, that’s going to happen, but overall I’m very proud of the effort that we gave. Most days, against most, against most teams it would have been enough. Today it wasn’t.”
