High school volleyball: Maple Mountain wins first 5A state championship in program history

Maple Mountain qualified for the 5A volleyball championship match without dropping a single set in its last nine matches, including during its postseason run.

With that in mind, the Golden Eagles had all the confidence in the world as they defeated Bountiful in the 5A championship, although it took four sets on Saturday.

“There was never a doubt in my mind. It’s because of what we do every day in the gym, what we’ve done in terms of putting together a tough schedule,” said Maple Mountain head coach Adam Longmore.

“We’re not big. We may be the smallest team out of all the teams here. We have grit and we have resilience and the ability to let go of the stakes and be really selfless players. When I look at each of these players individually and collectively as a whole, at the end of the day, they’re just great people.”

Maple Mountain started Saturday’s match as confident as ever, immediately racking up a lead with strong serving, including four aces from Adi Gammell.

Bountiful struggled with its serve receive while Maple Mountain had strong passes and kills, which resulted in a 25-14 set one win for the Golden Eagles.

The momentum then continued through the second set, which Maple Mountain won 25-22.

However, Bountiful wasn’t willing to go down that easy. The Redhawks got a huge lift from Taylor Harvey, who ended the night with 30 kills. Harvey has been one of the top players in the state this year and Longmore knew his team had to plan for her.

“Harvey’s a great player and everybody in the state knows that and we know that. We told our blockers if she’s in your zone, you got to go up,” said Longmore.

“When our block was in the right place and then our blocks lined up in the right place, we got some nice ups. She had a bunch of kills and you’re never going to stop a player like Harvey, but if we can slow her down then we have a shot, and we slowed her down.”

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Even with the Golden Eagles’ strong defensive effort, Bountiful was able to regain some momentum with an 18-25 third set win. It was the first set loss for Maple Mountain since its loss to Bingham on Oct. 6.

But Maple Mountain picked itself back up and gained the lead back in the fourth set to close out the match 3-1 to win the championship. Longmore says resilience has been a strength of the Golden Eagles this year.

“We haven’t dropped a lot of sets this year,” said Longmore. “We have dropped some and we’ve dropped some to some good teams and Bountiful is a great team, but through those experiences we’ve learned to just deal with it, and we’ve never really struggled at it.

“It’s been a point of emphasis. We’ve talked about the ebbs and flows of the game and just playing through them and just trusting that at the end of the day the team that’s going to work hard and be disciplined, that team is going to end up on top.”

Maple Mountain had strong contributions from all over the court, but outside hitter Marly Pratt led the Golden Eagle offense with 17 kills in the win.

“It still doesn’t feel very real, but it’s just all our hard work paid off and I’m so proud of every single one of our girls,” said Pratt. “We’ve just grinded and everyone’s put in 100% of their effort every single day, so it’s just lots of hard work and hours and hours in the gym, then outside the gym just being best friends with my teammates.

“We’re really best friends and we play for each other. It doesn’t matter who’s on the other side of the net, we’re playing for each other, and I think we have a lot of grit and a lot of heart.”

The 5A state championship is a first for Maple Mountain, but even in victory Longmore stressed the quality of his players.

“This is a cool deal for sure, but I think even more important than that is who they’re becoming in the process,” said Longmore. “These are wonderful young ladies. They’re going to be successful in anything that they do because of what they put in the last three months.”