One team had to lose.

Unlike two years ago, however, it was apparently Sedona Red Rock High School’s turn, as the Scorpions volleyball team fell to Thatcher High School in the Division IV state championship Saturday, Nov. 8, at the Prescott Valley Events Center.

“It was a battle between the two best teams,” head coach John Parks said. “There is nothing I would do differently. The intensity was there, the emotion was there: They just gave it everything they had, every second they were out there.”

After trading victories with the Eagles through their first four games, SRRHS saw the drive to capture its second state title in three years come up short in a fifth-game tiebreaker — 22-25, 25-18, 17-25, 25-18, 15-17.

“It is so hard to get to that championship game,” Parks said. “We need to be proud of that. It just didn’t quite go our way.”

Six-footers Regan Hurkett, Sophia Perry and DeVonne Ryter had worked all season to build the Great Wall of Sedona in front of the net, which led the Scorpions to a 32-10-3 overall record — second-best in SRRHS history to the 2012 state champions — and a Section IV title with one Division IV loss, at home to Northland Preparatory Academy.

That wall also overwhelmed the Spartans and the Scorpions’ two other earlier state tournament opponents — Tombstone and Valley Christian high schools — as only the Trojans could win a game from SRRHS going into the final.

But a rolled right ankle suffered the morning of the title match limited the junior Hurkett’s effectiveness, and soreness from a stress fracture in her left foot affected the lift and timing on kills throughout the four tournament games for Perry, a sophomore.

For the full story, please see the Wednesday, Nov. 12, issue of the Sedona Red Rock News.