It took until midway through their second set for the Wallkill volleyball team to start playing their best.

It was enough to get them to the Mid Hudson Athletic League championship game, where the Division I champion Panthers ran into the Division IV champion, Millbrook Blazers, who swept them in two straight sets to win the MHAL title.

“They’re phenomenal,” Wallkill coach Julie Michella said. “Their two outside hitters, Julia (Stoliker) and Bella (Darnell) are two of the best hitters that I’ve seen this year, and I anticipate that they could possibly win the state championship.”

The Panthers hung with the Blazers for about half of the first set, but Millbrook broke a 10-10 tie after a block by Marissa Markou. A block by Stoliker gave the Blazers a four-point lead that they widened to eight points with Markou at the service line, as the Blazers went on to win 25-18.

“I was very pleased with how we played the first set, minus a couple of serving runs that they went on because they have great serves,” Michella said. “I felt like my team was laying great defense and we were taking hard swings and really challenging them and getting them out of their system a little bit.”

The second set was different as it started with a four-point service run by Olivia Fried, and another long service run by Markou widened the Blazers’ lead to 10-1. They widened the led the set by as many as 11 points, 19-8.

Wallkill was unable to close the lead and fell behind by 13 points as the Blazers took the title with a 25-12 win in the second set.

“They went on a big serving run at the beginning of the set and that put us in a hole that we couldn’t get out of,” Michella said. “We did start to play better, but at that point against a team like Millbrook that’s one of the top teams in the state (it’s too big a hole).”

The Panthers clinched their finals berth with a 2-1 win over the Division II champion Highland Huskies

The way the night started for the Panthers, it looked as though they may struggle to get to the championship match, even as they took a 9-3 lead on the Huskies, who eventually rallied to take a 20-13 lead on the Panthers. A kill by Lauren Hall tied the set at 24-24, but Highland got the next two points and finished the first set with an ace by Olivia Bell to post a 26-24 win.

“I wasn’t pleased with the first set against Highland,” Michella said. “We were playing really soft, doing a lot of tipping and rolling, serving easy balls. To Highland’s credit, they were playing aggressively, and they were serving hard. They were getting touches on every ball and playing very scrappy.”

The Huskies opened up a three-point lead in the second set until Wallkill fought back to tie the match at 16-16 and a long service run by Hannah Stewart lifted the Panthers to a 25-19 win. Wallkill took an early lead in the third set and built a 24-16 win.

“Once we decided in the second set that we would start playing aggressively, then we were able to get some runs put together and start swinging at the ball,” Michella said.

The Panthers’ season will keep going this week as they earned the second seed in this week’s Section 9 Class A tournament and will play Minisink Valley on Thursday. The winner goes onto Sunday’s championship match at James I. O’Neill High School.

“The good thing about the MHAL championship is that it allows you to play in a really big game before you have the sectional playoff,” Michella said. “So, I’m happy to play really good team to help us prepare for what we need to work on for sectionals.”