It only felt appropriate that Tuesday night’s District 6-9 Class 2A championship followed suit.

By the time the back-and-forth struggle was settled, it came down to a 9-3 Dragon run in set five to capture their first-ever title, this one over the Beavers, 15-25, 25-22, 18-25, 25-18, 15-11.

“It was amazing,” Central coach Mark Lingenfelter said of the historic moment. “Such a good team that we played. It was a battle every single time we played them. Thankfully, we came out on top this time.”

After coming up short against West Shamokin on this stage a year ago, the Dragons will host South Fayette — the WPIAL runner up — on June 2 at a time to be announced in the PIAA Class 2A First Round.

Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski Central's Landon Rhodes (left) and Lincoln Mauk go for a block on DuBois' CJ Ranola.

The Beavers appeared to be on track to take over the match late in set three as Austin Brown registered a pair of kills to help them take a three-point lead. CJ Ranola and Nathan Johnson combined to finish off a 5-0 run in set two to take the lead.

“Every match has went to five (sets) and has been real tight in that fifth set,” DuBois coach Dave Alberts said. “I told my team that the team that played more consistent was going to win. I felt like we got into a couple of spurts there throughout the match where we could’ve pulled away, but we started playing inconsistent.

“They started serving pretty well, and we went on a few spurts where we were giving up points. Credit to them, they did a good job with their serve and they played pretty consistent the whole match.”

Central (8-4) started flipping the script in set four as Mason Kocsis and Colby Gojmerac added a finish of their own before Christian Hueston added a kill and block that helped stretch the set four lead to 21-13.

Blake Reynolds forced the race to 15 with a deciding point in game four.

Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmun ski Central’s Bailey Wilt looks on as teammate Blake Reynolds digs at a ball fired at him by DuBois.

“I call Blake our spark plug,” Lingenfelter said. “When he’s up, we’re up. He delivered tonight.”

Lincoln Mauk helped set the tempo in early in set five along with Hueston to help take a 9-3 lead to start the final frame.

“It definitely takes the pressure off a little bit so you can focus on the momentum that you have, and hopefully ride it all the way to them,” Lingenfelter said.”

DuBois did cut the deficit down two, but Hueston – including the game-deciding point – along with Kocsis to help put the game away.

“I saw (the ball) coming over the net, and I knew the set was coming to me,” Hueston said of the game-deciding play. “I just knew that we were doing this for all of the past teams that couldn’t do it. It just feels so great, I’m so happy to be part of this team.”

Lingefelter praised his team captain for keeping a level head when times got tough as the Dragons took the third of the four matchups this season.

“He’s such a strong leader, always stay level headed, always keeps his teammates high and strong,” he said.

DuBois finished its season at 8-6.