After his Scorpions dropped 3-straight points to fall behind 22-21 in the third set of Tuesday, Aug. 31’s season opener against Chino Valley, Sedona Red Rock High School volleyball coach John Parks called a timeout to give his players a boost.
“We’re going to end it on a 4-0 run,” Parks said. “That’s what I told them. That’s it.”
That’s exactly what Sedona did. The Scorpions dominated the final four points to win 25-8, 25-18, 25-22 for a 3-0 sweep over the Cougars.
After back-to-back Arizona Interscholastic 2A state tournament appearances and a No. 14 ranking at the end of last season, Sedona got just what it wanted — a 1-0 start to 2021.
“It was a good start to the season. We came out good, did what we’re supposed to do,” Parks said. “Didn’t have a lot of unforced errors and just kind of played our game. So I was a little happy about that. We moved the ball around, everybody got off to a good start.”
The Scorpions’ great start to the season was jump-started by a scorching opening set. As a result of superb touches around the net from sophomore Rachel Roderick and staunch defense as a unit, Sedona took a 10-3 lead into a Chino Valley timeout.
The Cougars regrouped from there and kept up with the Scorpions’ pace, as the two teams traded points back-and-forth to a 14-8 Scorpion lead.
That 8th point would be the last of the first set for Chino Valley. During an 11-0 run to close out the set, the Scorpions suffocated the Cougars through an aggressive attacking style, using their size to their advantage and allowing the Cougars to make their own mistakes.
“We have some big girls,” Parks said. “So they did what they’re supposed to do. They played big. So that was kind of the expectation.”
Despite the massive momentum boost and the benefit of an opening night home crowd, Sedona’s second set was more of a test. The Scorpions initially went up 4-1, but the Cougars went on a run of their own. After some Sedona unforced errors, Chino Valley took 9 of the next 12 points to take a 10-8 lead in the second set, its first of the match.
From this point Sedona appeared to play a more focused game. It controlled the remainder of the second set, finishing it with a 14-8 run emphasized with a cross-court smash by senior and defending Sedona Red Rock News SRRHS Female Player of the Year Stephanie Medel.
The Scorpions won the second set 25-18 and took a commanding 2-0 lead heading into the potential final set.
With the match going the direction it had, Chino Valley had to make a statement in the third, and it did. The Cougars led 3-0 early and played with more energy than it had previously. The Scorpions, however, didn’t falter and began to show why they took the first two sets.
They played big and assertively. They were strong around the net and knew when to let the ball touch outside of the boundaries. With Sedona up 15-8 in the third, it looked like this set was going the same way as the others.
The Cougars didn’t let that happen. They recaptured some of their energy from early in the set and exploded for a 14-6 run to take the 22-21 lead. Right as it appeared that Chino Valley would extend the match to a fourth set and perhaps capture the momentum, Parks called timeout.
His team came back with a mission and they captured the final four points to sweep the Cougars.
In a sport as reliant on team chemistry as volleyball, Sedona appeared to have that. There were no seniors on last year’s roster, so besides a change at head coach, the team was mostly intact.
“It’s been a little bit of a change of style and system … so it’s cohesive and everybody knows each other and knows what to expect,” Parks said. “Some of them have played for me over the years, so we have that going for us. It helps, [the cohesion] certainly doesn’t hurt anything.”
With that, Sedona starts the season 1-0 and will look to remain unbeaten through the weekend as it plays in the Wolves Classic Volleyball Tournament at Estrella Foothills High School in Goodyear over the weekend.
Check back with the Sedona Red Rock News next week for updates on those games.
