In a season full of dominant victories, Harford Tech boys volleyball might have saved its most impressive win for its final match.
The Cobras have played with a target on their backs all season but withstood every challenge to the point only one remained. A victory Tuesday in the Harford County championship would cap their perfect campaign. North Harford, who gave Harford Tech its most difficult test just two weeks ago, was the final hurdle.
Any chance at an upset vanished minutes after the match began.
That realization hit Harford Tech players as they closed in on a deciding victory in the third and final set. The Cobras bench waited to erupt, needing a clinching point to provide the moment. It came to close out a 25-14 third set, and suddenly feelings from last year’s runner-up finish were gone.
For many on that bench, it was an erasure of an inverse mood. Harford Tech nearly took down Bel Air in the county title match a season ago but collapsed late. The Cobras finally felt what it’s like to be on the other side of that result when they breezed by North Harford in straight sets Tuesday.
“Much better,” coach Gary Clement quipped.
Players on this iteration of Harford Tech vividly recalled the sights and sounds from last year’s defeat. They watched tears fall from seniors whose final season just ended and stored that feeling until Tuesday’s chance at redemption.
“That was probably one of the worst nights of my life,” senior Saxon Fuller said. “I knew we had to work really hard this year to get back to where we were. That was a rough night.”
But Bel Air’s senior-heavy team was depleted; Harford Tech entered 2024 as the favorite. There are challenges in that, ones players felt throughout a season where — despite that seismic weight — they were hardly pressured.
Harford Tech went 13-0 in the regular season. They only dropped six sets, swept eight of their opponents and were only taken to a fifth set once all year.
“It definitely did feel like we had a lot of pressure knowing that we are supposed to win,” Fuller said.
How did they deal with that, prevent it from taking them down or becoming a source of problems? Harford Tech instead chooses to play with a loose confidence and swagger that permeates throughout its roster. It grew larger as the wins piled up. Then it reached an apex Tuesday.
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“It’s just a game,” senior Samuel Thomas said. “We’re just having fun.”
The Cobras’ toughest test came courtesy of North Harford in their regular-season finale. The Hawks pushed that contest to a decisive fifth set but fell late in Harford Tech’s narrowest win of the season. That told Clement’s players that they weren’t impenetrable and sparked a belief that Tuesday could go either way.
It was hardly close.
The first set reached a 20-20 deadlock before Harford Tech pulled away to take the opener, 25-21. Clement sensed a switch in those final moments, which his team seized and pounced on.
“Got that out of the system as a warm-up set,” the coach said. “We need to take this over now. Let’s go do it. We didn’t want them to think that they had a chance.”
Their momentum carried over for a 12-5 start to the second set that turned into a 25-14 victory to give them a commanding advantage. They again found a comfortable early lead in the final set and cruised to another 25-14 win, capped by a North Harford service error that sent the Harford Tech side into jubilation.
If Tuesday was an exclamation point on an otherworldly season, Harford Tech made it an emphatic one. They’ve made resounding wins commonplace.
“We definitely did have some weight on us this season,” Fuller said. “But we made it.”
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