SAEGERTOWN — It wasn’t for the District 10 championship. It wasn’t even for a clinch of the top seed in the District 10 Tournament.

But for Saegertown and Maplewood and the swarm of fans each team brought to Thursday night’s Region 1 boys volleyball match, it didn’t really matter.

The PENNCREST School District rivals put on quite a show for their following yesterday with Saegertown rallying to capture a huge 20-25, 26-24, 25-21, 17-25, 15-13 win.

With the win, the Panthers pulled into a tie for first place with the Tigers in Region 1 at 10-2. Meadville (9-3) and Cambridge Springs (9-3) are also just a game back in the race with two regular season matches remaining for everyone.

“We played well,” Saegertown coach Justin Johnson said following the match. “It’s Senior Night and the guys want to win on their court and they wanted to do it against Maplewood.”

And for the Panthers it didn’t really matter how long it took.

Saegertown found itself at the service line on consecutive serves just four times in the first game as Robert Cierniakoski and the Tigers rolled to a 25-20 win. Cierniakoski had seven kills in the game with the Panthers collecting just nine as a team.

But Saegertown didn’t stay down for long, jumping out to a 5-2 lead in the second game. Maplewood did come back to tie it and took an 8-7 lead on a rotation violation by the Panthers, but Saegertown regained the lead three rotations later on a backrow attack by Josh Peters.

Saegertown retained at least a share of the lead until Maplewood went on a 5-1 run to go up 24-23. Kyle Beatty tied it back up for the Panthers with a kill. He added another kill and teamed up with Patrick Amy on a block to seal the game.

That game turned out to be huge for the Panthers, who responded with a 25-21 come-from-behind win in the third game to take a one-game advantage.

“Winning that second game … that was the key,” Johnson said.

Of course, Maplewood didn’t go down without fighting.

The Tigers came back recharged in the fourth game and took advantage of several attack errors by the Panthers and a strong blocking game by Aaron Bryant to come away with a somewhat easy 25-17 win. That set up the wild finish both Saegertown and Maplewood have become accustomed to when the two teams meet.

It also, unfortunately, led to a big loss for the Tigers on personnel.

Saegertown and Maplewood clawed and scratched in the final set.