Shy Ghara is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Marcos de Niza for AZPreps365.com.

The girls varsity volleyball team at Marcos de Niza can safely say their season did not go according to plan. They managed to win just one of 17 games, entering the offseason wondering what went wrong, what they can build on and what they might have to improve.

The Padres began the year with an 0-10 record, and with only one of those matches not being a shutout. Their tenth match against Tempe was their only victory Sept. 28, followed by six consecutive losses to close out the season. 

Marcos de Niza head coach Fernando Vital mentioned that this was a new team that might have needed this entire season to try to get accustomed to one another.

“The team did struggle a lot with this team being a few seniors and the rest being a young team. And dealing with the seniors trying to believe in me because I was their third coach in the four years they played for was tough," Vital said.  

"Continuity in sports always goes a long way in terms of success, and the fact of the matter is that this team did not have much of it throughout the year."

A lot of times, the solution to improving a team that has not had much time to play together is exactly that: time.

However, it would be unfair to suggest that that was the only reason the team failed to perform better.

Zoey Arner, the Padres’ leader in digs and receptions, mentioned that the team has gone periods of time where they have not played good, clean volleyball.

“We go on slumps a lot, we sometimes don’t execute as well as we should and it affects us" Arner said. 

The silver lining for the team is that they feel like they can build on heading into next season is developing  chemistry because this roster still having fun together.

The players are smiling between plays and they are happy to be playing together, which is always a positive sign moving forward. Even their best player in middle hitter Celeste Rivas has vouched for the noticeable chemistry on the team.

When a team is struggling, if they don’t enjoy playing together, that creates an even bigger problem, and that means that a team is heading in the wrong direction. 

That wasn't the case for the Padres.

“We had a struggle in the beginning, but now that we are working as a team, I feel like we are continuing to get better," Rivas said.

They have much upside moving forward and a formula for plenty of future success. They just have to learn from their mistakes and keep working toward their potential. No struggle, no progress.