The Red Devils battled hard in the final set as they mustered their biggest lead in the three sets, a 17-13 advantage, but the Lions tied the contest at 22-22 and the fifth-year varsity athlete Mazur served up the go-ahead lead followed by the game-winning kill moments later to seal the victory for the Lions.

"He might be the best player in the section. Not just in Class B, but all of the classes. He was a vital piece to the success that we had this season," Reitz said.

Although VVS didn’t come away with the victory, Sweet said that with what this team has had to battle through to get to the championship game was satisfying enough for him. "We’ve really had our ups and downs as a team this season, but we had been playing better volleyball as a team lately and the win against Oneida was huge for us. Easily the biggest win of our season and one of the highlights of my season," Sweet said.

Red Devils senior Luke Voelker also had a fine showing during his last high school game with a team-high 16 helpers with an ace, a kill and a block while teammates Stephen Davis added 13 digs and two aces and Aaron Owens tallied four kills and a block.

"For these guys to get into the sectional finals was probably a long dream at the beginning of the season," VVS coach Jim Burton said.

"I’m extremely proud of the way we handled ourselves this season and really proved to everyone that we weren’t a team that was going to go away. We were going to keep rallying all year and even showed some fight in the last set here tonight."

The Red Devils did show fight through their matches, but couldn’t find a way to figure out the glaring height advantage between the two schools. The front line for Living Word towered over the much shorter VVS starters and it lead to some kill-happy slams from the Lions.

Isaac Virag had 11 kills, two assists and a block, as teammate Deng Gai had four kills, Marcus Williams added three kills and Ethan Irish guided the offense with a game-high 32 assists.