Sabrina McClain is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Camelback High School for AZPreps365.com

The Camelback girls volleyball team won their second game of the week and season as they defeated Trevor G. Browne High School in four sets, 25-23, 25-17, 17-25, 27-25, Thursday night at Camelback High School.

After the Spartans won their first game of the season Tuesday night against Alhambra, they decided to switch up their game plan, which meant a change in the roster.

“We tried some new positions,” Camelback coach Cailinanne Johnson said. “We switched up our libero, just to try to get something fresh and new. Realizing our strengths and weaknesses, I think that helped and the girls’ positivity about it.”

Junior Madison Amarillas finished with 13 kills and nine aces and junior Leah Luevanos finished with seven kills, two aces and seven blocks to help their team to victory.

The Bruins started off the first and second sets strong as they went on a 9-1 run and a 5-1 run, but they were not able to keep the momentum going to win those sets. 

After being down 2-0, the Bruins went on two 6-1 runs in the third set which kept them in the game as they won the third set. After getting out of their rhythm, the Spartans still had at least one more set to play.

“We really needed to reset full on,” Camelback senior Violeta Becerra said. “Our mindsets weren’t there, our game play wasn’t there. We really had this mindset of, we’re not gonna get the next set, or we’re gonna have to go to the fifth set.”

The fourth set was intense as both teams were showing their strengths and had continuous lead changes. There were nine ties before the set ended, 27-25, but the Spartans showed resilience and had an impressive finish.

“We all took a deep breath and we said, ‘We’re gonna get this one and we’re gonna go home,’” Becerra said.

The Bruins didn’t give up after losing the first two sets, in fact they played harder in the last two sets, but it was too late to overcome the disadvantageous position they had put themselves in.

“That third and fourth set, if they would’ve played like that the first two sets, we would’ve probably had that,” Bruins coach Kimberly Pharr said. “But they got a little down and it’s hard to get them back up.”

As the Spartans came into this week 0-6 and finished the week at 2-7, Johnson said the girls finally started taking feedback from their coaches and took some down time to figure things out together.

“We’re really trying to push on them that we as coaches can’t do it all,” Johnson said. “They have to uplift each other.”

Camelback will travel to play North High School at 6 p.m. Tuesday and Browne (1-8, 1-7) will host Alhambra (0-8, 0-7) at 6 p.m. Tuesday.