MORRISVILLE — The Apex volleyball team clinched its second consecutive conference championship on Tuesday, with a 3-1 defeat of Green Hope.

With a week left in the regular season, the two teams met in what served as a de facto Tri-Nine Conference championship game.

Apex had yet to lose a conference match this season, while Green Hope’s only Tri-Nine loss came in an earlier match to Apex.

The Cougars (17-3, 14-0) have been dominant this season in conference play, only dropping two games in all its Tri-Nine matches combined.

But Green Hope (15-4, 13-2), feeding off the emotion of senior night festivities, increased that number to three in the first game with a 25-23 win.

“They definitely had a big crowd, but once we got our heads in the game and started to focus, we got over it,” junior Kris Harris said.

Teammate Megan Gravley agreed that the Falcons overwhelmed Apex at first.

“I think in the first game we were kind of rattled,” Gravely said. “I think in the second, third and fourth games we really came together as a team, picked up the intensity and started encouraging each other and that really helped.”

Coach Nikki O’Connell’s team, which features no seniors, responded in the second game. The Cougars won handily 25-16 despite seven ties by the time the game was at 14-all.

“We’ve worked on terminating – putting the ball away and I think they capitalized on that in going after balls they needed to,” Nikki said.

Game three saw the Falcons’ Lindsey O’Connell and other seniors lead their team to a 21-17 lead. But eight straight points from Apex – four coming from Harris – allowed the Cougars to take the game by the same 25-21 score.

“I’m really, really proud of them,” Green Hope coach Heather Bailey said of her team, which will finish second in the conference. “Apex is a really, really good team and letting up at all can kind of take things one way or the other … give them one or two points and they can run with it.”

The Cougars, by taking five of the last seven points, closed out the match with another 25-21 final in the fourth game. Having won its last 27 conference matches, Apex is now 27-1 in conference play over the last two years.

“It definitely means a lot,” Gravely said of the conference title. “We just wanted it so bad this year to go back-to-back.”

Players said now that the conference title is locked up, the goal is to go to the state championship. Apex was one game away from the state finals last year, but was ousted by Greenville Rose at home.