Scottsdale — The Catalina Foothills girls volleyball team faced its toughest test of the season so far on Thursday night, taking on the Saints of Notre Dame Prep on the road. Despite putting up their best fight, the Falcons fell to the Saints in the first three sets. While it wasn’t the result the Falcons were hoping for, it provided a lot of learning opportunities for the girls to take away as the season progresses.
“We have a very new team, so we’ve been working on some stuff the last two weeks,” coach Andrew Adair said.
With a whole new set of players, there’s a whole new set of kinks to work out.
It’s taking some time, but the group is working on improving chemistry and communication; Something you could tell they were still struggling with executing in the game against the Saints. There were a number of near collisions or missed balls because of the lack of communication amongst Catalina Foothills.
“We have one girl starting right now who played last year,” Adair said. “So we are in a little bit of a rebuild-mode.”
Being in the midst of a rebuild, there’s no one particular player who is carrying a majority of the load. Adair says there have been players who have stepped up every game, delivering their own unique contributions to the team.
“Getting kills, getting blocks, going on long serving runs,” Adair said. “Everyone is contributing in their own way, which is really nice to see and a good sign for things going forward.”
When it comes to on the court play, serve-receive is the biggest thing Adair has been focusing on with his players.
“We’re working on serving,” Adair said. He continued, “That first ball contact has to be a little bit better… If we can work on that first ball contact, we’ll be in a great spot.”
According to Coach Adair, it’s just going to take time to get the team to where they want to be.
“It’s early in the season,” Adair said. “We’re lucky that we get to learn from such good teams and continue moving on.”
Catalina Foothills also plays up in the Valley two more times this year at both Ironwood and Canyon View, along with other far road games at Vista Grande, Casa Grande and Maricopa. Adair says he’s not quite sure how things got scheduled, but they’ll take what they can from the competition and will put their best foot forward.
Adair attributes the two and a half hours on the bus as to a partial reason why he thinks his girls may have struggled a bit, but says they’ve got to learn to work with it with all of their long road games this season.
Despite being in a rebuild, Adair isn’t worried about the future of his team. There’s a powerful class of freshmen and sophomores in the wings waiting for their time.
“We have a great future,” Adair said. “Our sophomore class and our freshman class are both really strong. Our sophomore class is probably one of the stronger classes we’ve had in years.”
