Eleven years ago, Fountain Hills High School made history as one of the first five high schools in the country to play beach volleyball at the varsity level. Fountain Hills had to drop the sport in 2014 because the school could not field a full team, but then Peter McGloin was hired for the 2015 school year, and he revitalized the program.

The Falcons kick off their 10th beach volleyball season tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 24, at 4 p.m. They will host Flagstaff at Golden Eagle Park, and this Friday, Feb. 25, the Falcons travel to Horizon Honors. The Falcons go to Gilbert Christian next Monday, Feb. 28.

McGloin’s first season with the beach volleyball team looked similar to how it does now. There were lots of indoor volleyball players who were trying out beach volleyball for the first time. This season, 13 of the 16 players are underclassmen, and none of the players have been on the team for more than one season.

Junior Mia Kohoutek is a standout returner, earning a first team all-region selection last year as a sophomore. In her first year playing beach volleyball, Kohoutek had the fifth most wins on the team, going 12-3, and she worked her way up to the No. 2 pair. This season, she hopes to be an anchor and role model for the new players.

“I’m from Minnesota, so it was a huge thing to play beach volleyball,” Kohoutek said. “I played indoor my whole life, starting when I was seven, and then I decided to come out here and switch…We lost eight seniors last year, so that kind of hurt, but rebuilding is rebuilding, and I’m excited to be a leader as a junior. It’s a little different, but I think a lot of these girls are good workers.”

Kohoutek is the only returner from the top four pairs from last year, and she is the only returning varsity upperclassman. The only senior, Amaya Evans, is a transfer student who has never played beach before, but McGloin is excited to see what she can do. According to McGloin, Evans comes early and stays late at practices, and she’s athletic, tall and driven.

The only other junior on the roster, Olivia Sopeland, played for the first time last year, and she played mostly junior varsity. Last year was the first JV season in Arizona and Sopeland, along with many of the other second-year players, have real game experience because of JV.

“I had four coaches in the program last year, so we ran multiple practices,” McGloin said. “We had to grow all these kids because we had a class of nine freshmen last year, and thank goodness, because now those nine freshmen are nine sophomores and they’re the core of our team. It's a good thing we had that year to develop, so we’re at a little better starting point than we would have been otherwise in this situation, but we still have a lot of work to do.”

Bella Garman stands out among the rest of the returning sophomores this season. Garman played in the No. 5 pair on varsity for most of the season last year, and she earned eight wins with multiple partners. Elliana Schulze was another freshman who earned three varsity wins last season. Sydney Boeshans only had one varsity win as a freshman, but she led the team in JV wins with six.

Garman got some playoff experience at the end of last season, too. Although Sophie Wickland joined the team late as a freshman last year, she played the No. 5 pair with Garman in two playoff matches. Wickland might be the tallest Falcon, and according to McGloin, the Falcons have more height than normal with Wickland, Evans and freshman Jocelyn Bloedel all around or above six feet tall.

“You don’t need it to win, but it’s always nice to have somebody that can go up there and change the game,” McGloin said.

The Falcons have talent and various degrees of volleyball experience, but beach volleyball is a completely different game than indoor volleyball. In indoor, six girls play on the court together, the coach can call several timeouts and even try to adjust in the middle of a play. In beach, there are only two girls playing at a time, they can only call one timeout per game, and McGloin can only coach during that timeout or during side changes.

“I always compared beach volleyball to raising college kids,” McGloin said. “You can’t coach in the actual game, so you got to hope all of your lessons are going to carry through and they are going to actually do what you’ve been telling them and raising them to do. Whereas in indoor volleyball, you can coach them right in the moment, and help them get where they need to be.”

McGloin thinks that this season will be full of development, like his 2015 season was when the Falcons went 6-6. His goal is to get the roster to play purposefully, and to play in games the way they play in practice. In time, the Falcons aim to regain form as one of the best teams in the state. In the five seasons since 2015, the Falcons had a 60-4 record, and they won two straight state championships in 2017 and 2018.