Mac Friday is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Horizon Honors for AZPreps365.com.

When Horizon Honors Secondary School was initially formed in 1996 as a year-round public charter school it offered only two sports: volleyball and basketball. The Eagles had no history or identity

 

Over 20 years later, the school boasts 14 sports, a groundbreaking state championship and an athletic identity still growing.

 

“I always tell my new coaches when they come in that we have a different type of kid here,” boys soccer coach Patrick Andrew said. “They may not be the most talented technique-wise, but you're not going to have the same issues that you might elsewhere. They work hard, it’s just different.”

 

As Horizon Honors grew in attendance during the 2000s and entered the 2010s, the athletic department and its offerings grew with it. As of 2019, with a student body of 720 in grades 7-12, the school has drastically expanded its selection of sports, adding boys and girls teams for cross country, swim and dive, soccer, track and field, along with coed golf and beach volleyball.

 

The expansion of the athletic programs at Horizon Honors is due to the work of Andrew, former ADs Wayne Pfleiger and Jim Keen and the current athletic director, Nate Agostini, who took the job in 2008 after nine years of coaching at the school.

 

A taste of success

 

Like most new schools, Horizon Honors struggled to find wins in its first years competing in athletics. Most of the programs were coed due to the lack of students and seldom found success in the few sports that were offered.

 

The addition of the coed cheer program in the early 2000s came with flourishing results. In 2003, 2004 and 2005 the Eagles won the coed cheer state championships among the 1A-3A division. As student attendance grew, the team beat the likes of San Manuel, Bourgade Catholic and Wickenburg. After another state title in 2009, the success of the program began to waver and except for several individual track champions, athletic success for the Eagles began to decrease as well.

 

The breakthrough

 

In 2015, after rebuilding years for multiple programs, the Eagles were poised for success again, this time in girls volleyball. After two years as an assistant coach, Kris Maglunog stepped into the role as head coach ahead of the season, and the team found instant success with Maglunog’s energetic, supportive coaching style.

 

Under the first-year coach, the Eagles won a record-high 33 games on their way to a sectional championship and were the third overall seed in the state playoffs. After cruising through the first three rounds, Horizon Honors dropped the semifinal in a five-set heartbreaker to Chandler Prep.

 

After the upsetting defeat, the Eagles wanted redemption.

 

“I had made it a point that year to schedule the toughest teams as possible going into the 2016 season because we had lost in the state semi-finals the year before,” Maglunog said. “Those seniors were very hungry to win and get back on top.”

 

Those hungry seniors, led by star player Alexa Smythe, built a special bond through the tough loss in 2015 and by working hard and playing for each other, they ensured that it was state championship win or bust in 2016.

 

“The reason we won the championship was our hard work, by going out and playing for each other,” Smythe said. “The selflessness that we had going on playing for each other and playing for (Maglunog), that's what it came down to, yes we were talented, but it was our bond and that extra drive that helped us win.”

 

The Eagles did win that year, and they did so decisively. Horizon Honors entered the 2A state tournament as the No. 1 overall seed and were undefeated in their region. Across 10 games within the 2A Metro East Region, the Eagles only lost four sets collectively.

 

In the state tournament, the Eagles continued their dominance, winning 12 straight sets in four games. In the championship match, Horizon Honors avenged the previous year’s loss to Chandler Prep, sweeping their rivals to take the school’s first-ever modern-era AIA team title in any sport.

 

“That title meant so much to everyone involved,” Agostini said. “I still remember it like it was yesterday. I remember seeing the excitement at the girls' faces when they won. It was cool, it’s something we want to experience again, in any sport.”

 

The impact of the title was felt far beyond Agostini and his athletic department, stretching out to impact families, alumni and anyone else involved in the school's community.

 

Smythe’s older sister, Blaykleigh, who graduated in 2014, watched her younger sister achieve something she was unable to during her time in Columbia blue, but was ecstatic for the success of her former teammates.

 

“It was so exciting to (Blaykleigh),” Smythe said. “She'd been graduated for three years, but to see us win a state title at a school that she got to play volleyball at and that she helped form the foundation to was very special to her and many other people."

 

Not only was it the school’s first-ever title under the modern body of the AIA, but it was also rewarding to Maglunog because it pushed the school to recognize the total athletic success achieved by the school since its beginning.

 

“It pushed our school our school to actually get banners in the gym,” Maglunog said. “Before our win, the gym walls were empty, so we were the breakthrough in getting physical proof of athletic success up on the walls. It lets everyone, all the athletes, all the students, see what hard work really does.”

 

The 2016 girls volleyball state championship team proved to be the benchmark for success at Horizon Honors, providing a perfect example of how a group of players who were talented and devoted not only to the sport but also to each other as people, can pay off in the highest of ways. It would also pay dividends for the next batch of Horizon Honors athletes.

 

Translation of success

 

Long before the success of Maglunog and the girls volleyball program, Horizon Honors was still fairly small, progressively growing through the mid-2000s in enrollment, which correlated to more and more athletes. One of these programs working hard to develop was soccer, under the helm of Andrew.

 

For Andrew, originally born in London, England, soccer is everything. Before coming to Arizona to take the position at Horizon Honors, Andrew was a scout and coach in several professional clubs and organizations in England.

 

At the peak of his career, Andrew was a scout for Wimbledon FC during the club’s golden era in the 1980s and ’90s, a period in which the team was known as “The Crazy Gang.” They were one of the founding clubs of the English Premier League when it was first conceived in 1992. Andrew’s role as a scout was to recruit younger players for the team’s youth systems and academy.

 

After various connections and opportunities arose overseas, Andrew found himself at Horizon Honors, but a financial discrepancy interrupted his bigtime soccer aspirations at the school, leading him to a coaching job with a local club team, one he still is involved with.

 

With Andrew’s soccer dreams at Horizon Honors put on the backburner, it would ultimately be the students at the school who pushed the envelope to add the sport to the athletic department’s repertoire at the turn of 21st century.

 

“We really got going in about 2000 when our high school had about 70 kids,” Andrew said. “Some kids expressed in an interest in adding the sport, so we started off by doing little camps, and fundraising to purchase our own uniforms.”

 

Andrew’s program is one of several at Horizon Honors which does not boast its own on-campus amenities. With no soccer field on school grounds, the team practices at a local facility, Pecos Park. The fields at the athletic park are rough, described as “one of the worst playing surfaces out there” by Andrew.

 

However, the gritty, hard-working team embraces it, and also embraces the responsibilities of practicing and playing at an off-campus location. The team is responsible for bringing its own water and gear to practice, something which Andrew says humbles the team.

 

“They’re willing to do what not a lot of other student-athletes aren’t,” Andrew said. “Some recruits and athletes leave or are steered away by the fact that we practice on a city field, but we also have kids here who are willing to roll up their sleeves and bleed Colombia blue.”

 

With the success of girls volleyball, the wins began to rub off onto Andrew’s program. After a state championship appearance in 2015-16 where it was bounced in the quarterfinals by Buckeye Union, Andrew’s boys’ soccer team had their best season to date during the 2016-17 campaign. An 11-3-1 season gave the Eagles the No. 4 overall seed in the 3A tournament, where they advanced to the quarterfinals before losing 2-1 to Northwest Christian.

 

Over the next two years, Andrew’s team extended their streak of state title appearances to four consecutively however, both years ended with losses in the quarterfinals.

 

Who’s up next?

 

With a major state title under its belt, and multiple teams itching to take the next step in the journey to the state tournament, it’s unclear who will be the next champion at Horizon Honors.

 

However, two likely candidates are teams that are led by coaches who have taken lessons from Maglunog and look to translate the success of girls volleyball into their own. Those teams, boys basketball and boys soccer, also embody the hard-working attitude of Horizon Honors athletes.

 

Head boys basketball coach Chris Henderson possesses and reflects the infectious positivity and constant energy of Maglunog, pushing his players to be the best they can be while working hard to get there.

 

Andrew, who is more of a calm and collected coach, learned how to be patient with the development of his team with help from Maglunog.

 

“Something I learned from Kris is not all of your players want (to win) as bad as the coach wants to,” Andrew said. “You have to allow them to take the steps towards greatness and it will come ultimately when they are ready, but if you force it, you're more likely to get negative results as opposed to positive results.”

 

Both programs under Henderson and Andrew are young and have to face the challenge of playing schools with larger enrollment, but both have the potential to make a lot of noise and catch other teams by surprise.

 

For Andrew and his soccer program, this season’s future remains unclear after graduating multiple seniors. However, a young core and the hard-working attitude of the Eagles remain in place, and with Andrew in the driver’s seat, positive results are a viable outcome.

 

For Henderson and boys basketball, it is a similar story. Young players like sophomore standouts Michael Keelen and Quinn Cook make up the youthful base of the Eagles squad and under the strong leadership of Henderson, the team is poised to start a string of successful years in Ahwatukee.

 

“So, this year, I've been saying that a lot of a lot of people don't have expectations for us, which is exactly what I want,” Henderson said. “I don't want you to think about us ever. And then we get to come in and shock some teams, which I'm excited for. I think we make a statement, then turn around next year and make an even bigger statement.”

 

At Horizon Honors, there may not be a rich history of success and with numerous obstacles such as limited resources and smaller enrollment impeding prosperity, winning can be hard to come by.

 

However, Agostini’s athletic department, with the drive and devotion of coaches like Maglunog, Henderson and Andrew and by teaching the lessons of teamwork, selflessness and commitment, has formed a model for the ideal Horizon Honors student-athlete.