This year, Perry approved sand volleyball as a sanctioned Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) sport instead of a club. This means that the sand volleyball team competed with other high schools as well as received a state ranking instead of just playing for fun.

Despite the lack of sand courts on campus currently, a location was confirmed to host practices and games. All home games and practices were held at the sand courts at Seville.

Coach Fred Mann said, “Seville has been unbelievable. They are extremely kind to let us use their courts.”

However, at any moment Seville could decline their hospitality. In which case on-campus courts would be needed.

Principal Dan Serrano said, “A couple of years ago we looked at building courts. Ideally it would be great but I don’t think we have the funding.”

Sand courts are expensive to construct and maintain and there are other items of higher importance on the school’s budget. In order for courts to be built there would have to be some type of fundraising.

Also, a location somewhere on the campus would need to be secured. Presently, there are numerous issues with building on-campus courts that prevent the idea from becoming a reality. Seville will continue to host home games and be the unofficial Perry sand courts.

As far as the team goes, this all-girls squad is comprised of freshman to senior players with both indoor and outdoor volleyball backgrounds. The diverse arrangement of players did not halter the girls as they finished the season with a 12-2 record.

Senior Amanda Aguirre doubled as an indoor varsity and sand varsity player this season. This experience has been invaluable for her as she explained, “We have some girls with a lot of experience and some with less experience but playing together, we help each other out.”

Aguirre was not the only player to double, either. Many other girls, such as Freshman Matea Suan, not only played for the indoor team earlier in the high school season, but also play on a club team during the sand volleyball season.

Mann said, “We kind of got to work around indoor schedule. We have good girls who sometimes have to leave early or they arrive a little late so we definitely need to work around that.”

This especially proved to be a problem on game days. There were some game days where players had to miss games due to their commitment to their club team. While not hurting the team’s record, this problem is still of concern and will be solved for future seasons.  

Overall, the girls put together an impressive season recording wins against teams like Basha and Hamilton. Mann said, “The best win of our season was against Salpointe Catholic. It was a 3-2 win and their teams are all pretty good.”

The only losses during the regular season came from Ironwood Ridge and four-time state champion Xavier. The girls fought hard against Ironwood but due to high winds that day they lost 3-2.

The inaugural season concluded and sand volleyball entered their first playoffs as 5th seed. On April 19, during the first round of playoffs, the team took an unexpected loss to 12 seed Mountain Pointe by a score of 3-2. Despite the early end to the season, the sand volleyball team achieved a lot in their first year.