Carolanna Feltner is a Master's student at ASU/Cronkite School of Journalism assigned to cover Desert Vista for AZPreps365.com

PHOENIX—Desert Vista boys volleyball added another win to its blotter after defeating Mountain Pointe, 3-1, at home on Thursday night. This game was also the first for the new varsity head coach, Mark Byrne-Quinn.

Previously the junior varsity coach, Byrne-Quinn moved into the position on Wednesday after previous head coach Jeff Nelson resigned one day after the Thunder had defeated Queen Creek.

“It’s kind of exciting to win the first game,” said Byrne-Quinn. “But there have been a few bumps and we’re working our way through it so doing well absolutely.”

The reason why Nelson left is mostly unknown aside from internal issues. However, it hasn’t brought the Thunder down.

“It just happened yesterday so it’s been a little tough,” said senior Chaz Barrett. “(Nelson) has a lot of IQ that we lost and it’s a lot of game knowledge that we’re lacking now but I think the energy is good and I think we bounce back in a positive way.”

Despite the abrupt change in coaching staff, the Thunder boys entered and ended the game with countless amounts of energy and strong camaraderie.

“We’ve been trying to build that throughout the year,” said Byrne-Quinn. “You know these are high school kids and we try to get them to have a good time and they’re having fun, they play well.”

Desert Vista started strong, winning the first set 25-12. The script flipped in the second set with Mountain Pointe winning 25-12.

“I mean honestly there was no chance we should’ve been losing that set,” said junior Zach York. “We kind of got down on each other, the energy was not there. I mean our serves we missed so many serves.”

However, Desert Vista was able to regroup and adjust its game plan.

“We kind of went back and we thought who we should be serving on the other side of the court,” said York. “Who should we be targeting when we’re hitting and then we just kind of got that back together. How we should be blocking, I mean they have a really good outside hitter and so we just kind of figured out how we should block him, how we should press him.”

The strategy paid off as the third set ended with a close score of 25-22 for Desert Vista (6-2).

“It’s definitely been a struggle,” said Barrett. “We lost eight or nine seniors last year, so just got the leadership that we were kind of lacking at the start but we’re getting it back.”

The Thunder have also lost senior Will Boelsen to an injury this past weekend.

“We’ll have Will coming back soon,” said York. ”So we’ll see how that comes facing our rivals, Corona, which we lost to during the (Wolf Howl) tournament.”

Mountain Pointe will play next in the Defend the Kingdom Invitational on Friday with their first game at 8 a.m. Desert Vista’s next game is against the Highland Hawks on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.