Noah Furtado is an ASU journalism student covering Carl Hayden High.

For a Carl Hayden girls volleyball program that’s suffered four winless campaigns — excluding a COVID-shortened schedule in 2020 — with just 13 victories over the last decade, dropping three consecutive sets to Red Mountain on Wednesday en route to its sixth such loss in as many matches this season was a clear reflection of its historical struggles.

But coach Andrew Scott said the team’s early woes are by design.

Carl Hayden has played only freedom matches to this point against elevated non-section competition meant to better prepare the Falcons for a 6A regional schedule, something unfamiliar for the program after competing at the 5A level just a season ago.

“We use these non-section games to practice our defense, to take up against their hits so when we get to our section play, our region games, we can compete that much better now that we've gone up against some of the better teams in the Valley,” Scott said.

Jatoya Washington, a sophomore setter and team captain, echoed a similar sentiment: “These are just the freedom games.”

Facing a balanced Mountain Lions offense, the Falcons’ defensive keys fell to the wayside as their hosts downed kills early and often in a dominant display.

Red Mountain finished with 30 kills spread across 10 players.

“The defense receiving hard hits is something that's kind of difficult to practice if we don't have those hard of hitters, so we really focus on these games to get those passes up,” Scott said.

Scott saw his team commit 28 total errors by the end of the final set, with miscommunication emerging as a persistent bane to its efforts. Senior libero and team captain Britzia Arguelles, the anchor of Carl Hayden’s defense, said as much following the blowout defeat.

“(Communication’s) very important because we have players crashing into each other,” Arguelles said. “We can get hurt. They weren't communicating in a little bit of the hits, so that was messing us up, too. Then we had a lot of spaces open that we wouldn't communicate in.”

Arguelles, who Scott said was voted the best defensive specialist in the 5A Metro region last season, even had her share of miscues with two services and six receiving errors. But, being the leader among six other seniors, she best embodied the coachability Scott invested in when he took over the program three seasons ago.

“I've moved up with a lot of the girls that are on the court because they started our COVID year as sophomores and now they're seniors,” Scott said. “So I've watched them develop, grow. They've taken on the rotations. They've taken on the roles in the last three years and watching them own those roles has been fun, and they're living the legacy of the rotations, the 5-1 (offense), running the 5-1, taking ownership of their roles so that the JV, as they come up, they're ready to go right from freshman year. They know what their expectations are for those roles.”

With the Falcons’ freedom slate ending next week, it’s a marker of hope for Scott as he seeks improvement amid tougher competition after leading Carl Hayden to two wins over the past two seasons.

“We've had a long stretch of games driving all the way out to Mesa and now we're taking it back home to compete where we'll shine,” Scott said.