Catalina Foothills beat Mica Mountain 3-1 Monday to open up the girls volleyball season for both squads. The Falcons compete in the 5A Conference under former Catalina Foothills standout Andrew Adair and the Thunderbolts compete in the 4A Conference under legendary head coach Amy Johnson.

Mica Mountain took the first set 25-18 after breaking out to a 22-13 lead, but Catalina Foothills came right back with senior standout Molly Brunell coming alive to lead the Falcons to a 25-16 win to tie the match up at one set each. The Falcons jumped out to a 12-4 lead in the third set but Mica Mountain slowly chipped away to cut the lead down to 18-16, only to see the Falcons rebuild a large lead at 23-17. The Thunderbolts scored three straight points to cut the back down to 23-20 but two kills from Tori Staples led to a 25-21 win and a 2-1 lead.

Mica Mountain built a 14-10 lead in the fourth set but the Falcons went on a 5-0 run to go up 15-14, but the Thunderbolts went on a run to take an 18-15 lead. A kill from Staples, a net violation and a block from Staples tied the set back up at 18-18. Still, Mica Mountain went up 22-20 but Brunell sparked a 5-0 run to close out the set 25-22 and the match at 3-1.

Mica Mountain was undersized in the match but the team showed plenty of fight with the upper-division foe and Catalina Foothills responded as one would expect from an experienced squad.

“Mica Mountain was really good, they kind of beat us on a couple of things in the first set, and that was their setter dumping and they ran a slide a lot to their middles and we really struggled with it,” Adair said. “I was super happy with our team in that we made adjustments so I think it just shows they have high ball, high volleyball, IQ. They worked really, really hard to get better and to fix the things that we asked them to fix and hopefully that continues.”

Johnson is two wins away from reaching her 400th career victory on the girl’s side in Arizona to go along with 347 she earned coaching boys with stops at Salpointe and Sabino before starting up the Mica Mountain program three years ago. The Thunderbolts are expected to compete for a high finish in the 4A Conference this year and the rise came rather quickly.

“We just did not execute well tonight at all after the first set,” Johnson said. “We're looking to compete for a state championship, there's a lot of really good teams, but I think we are one of them or will be one of them. We have a lot of work to do right now but I think we're in the mix. I would say we're still young, but we're really not with a ton of juniors and a couple seniors, but we just have to execute better.”