Mountain Pointe didn’t allow history to get in its way.

On Tuesday, it picked the right time to defeat Hamilton for the first time in four tries this season. The reward for Mountain Pointe after defeating Hamilton 26-24, 25-22, 22-25, 25-21 at Mesquite High is a trip to the 6A Conference volleyball championship match .

In the 6A final, Mountain Pointe will play another team it hasn’t fared well against. 

“I guess we’ll look at Corona (del Sol) and see what we can do there,” said Mountain coach Pointe Karen Gray as her team celebrated on Mesquite High’s floor.

Mountain Pointe lost four of its five regular season matches to Central Section mate Corona del Sol this season.

Corona del Sol needed a fifth game victory to finally end the season of a Xavier team that didn’t quit in the first 6A semifinal match Tuesday. Down 2-0, Xavier rallied to win the next two but lost the final game despite leading 11-9.

Corona del Sol ended the fifth game with a 6-0 run to close the match with a 25-23, 25-18, 15-25, 18-25, 15-11

victory.

“We passed well and were able to run our offense (during the first two games) and kept them (Xavier) off balance,” Corona del Sol coach Ben Maxfield said. “And then the wheels came off. They (Xavier) are a great team. They started serving us a lot better, and we were getting out of system.”

Before the final set, Maxfield switched his starting rotation and inserted his tall and lean hitting-machine, Lauren Forte, in the front row.

She set the tone early, Maxfield said, and Forte also closed Game 5 with a hard kill in the middle. When Corona del Sol (38-5) went up 11-9 in Game 5, Maxfield called a timeout.

Xavier foot faulted after that timeout, initiating Corona del’s final run. In Game 4, a couple of digs by Xavier’s Ashley Yeung and two aces by Emma Cisneros-Luebke pushed their team’s lead to 12 points.

Corona del Sol then went on a 9-2 run to cut Xavier’s lead, 23-18. But a kill by Briana McKnight and a kill in the middle sent the match to the final game.

Forte and Xavier’s Makena Patterson, two of the state’s top middles, showed off their power throughout the night.

“I just think we finally have all the weapons,” said Maxfield, whose previous two trips to the finals, in 2006 and 2009, finished with state runner-up trophies.

Mountain Pointe’s weapons also were firing away Tuesday.

Outside hitter Chapin Gray finished with 19 kills. Back row player Brianna Lopez had a huge match as well with 17 digs.

Some of her digs came during key stretches in the match. During one rally in Game 4, she had four digs, which allowed Nura Muhammad to finally end the rally with a tip and give Mountain Pointe a 19-11 advantage.

Setter Gabby Leo had 45 assists and 16 digs. Like Xavier, Hamilton kept scratching and clawing to stay in the match after dropping the first two games.

Middle Preslie Anderson kept Hamilton in the match, collecting kill after kill. Hamilton won the third game, but allowed Mountain Pointe to take a big early lead in Game 4.

Hamilton got within one point of tying it a couple of times before Mountain Pointe (35-8) closed the match with a Savione Usoro kill that floated to an open corner.

It was Usoro’s first and only kill of the night.  

“They (Mountain Pointe) just fight so freakin’ hard,” said Gray about her team. “We have a couple of spots where we have tiny blockers, but we make up for it with great defense. And I got to tell you this is the greatest team. They sing songs together. They (sing) Kumbaya together. They are amazing.”

Win Wednesday and Mountain Pointe might continue to sing more sweet tunes.