By Madeline Witt

On Friday night, the Sabino Sabercats faced off against the Fountain Hills Falcons in the 3A State Conference volleyball quarterfinals at Camelback High School.

Fountain Hills walked away the winner after sweeping Sabino, 25-19, 25-16, 25-15, to advance to Saturday’s semifinals.

“They had some key players that did a lot of really big things for them,” Sabino head coach Courtney Pehl said. “We just made little errors that kind of brought us down and let them get on runs.”

Fountain Hills came out slow in the first set, with its first three servers hitting the ball out of bounds.

Junior Kailey McMahon helped keep her team in the game with strong kills that Sabino had no answer for. Throughout the first set, Fountain Hills continued to have problems serving, but that was not enough to put them behind because Sabino continued to make small errors.

At 17-13, Pehl called a timeout, but it didn’t seem to help, as Fountain Hills kept the lead the rest of the first set with the help of McMahon and senior Rylee Bell’s kills.

The second set started off closer than first, with Sabino coming out strong, winning the first point. It kept the momentum going for the first half of the second set, trading points with Fountain Hills, which showed a lack of communication and organization.

After an ace from junior Kaiya Dublin, the Sabercats had their first lead of the match, but the lead didn’t last long.  After a six point serving streak, including an ace by sophomore Alyssa Barbagallo, the Falcons were back in front at 13-9.

“The team was very resilient today,” Fountain Hills head coach Peter McGloin said. “I thought there was a lot of opportunities for us to get frustrated and lose our edge and we were able to keep it and maintain our aggressiveness.”

As the Falcons increased their lead, Pehl took her second timeout, but it proved unhelpful again as McMahon closed out the set with an ace. Senior Carissa Spalt continued to win points for her team with hard kills in the middle, but it was not enough to overcome key errors the Sabercats continued to make.

Bell had a hard cross-court shot in the third set to stake her team to a 21-12 lead, when the Falcons really took over.

Sabino tried to rally back with more center court kills from Spalt, but the Falcons’ momentum was too much. Sophomore Jenn Stricker helped get her team to match point with a cross court attack, and junior Amara Freyrer-Melk finished it off with a dink.

“Everybody was reacting and processing the game quickly and processing the game the same way,” McGloin said. “It was just great.”

Fountain Hills advanced to the semifinals, where it will play Valley Christian on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at Camelback High School.

Witt is a sports journalism student.