Talk to new Fountain Hills High School volley-ball coach Peter McGloin about the local program and it will quickly become apparent that he is excit-ed for the 2015 season.

McGloin said he’s well aware of the turbulence the volleyball program has experienced in recent years, but he aims to move the Falcons into a new, and hopefully suc-cessful, direction.

Hailing from Madison, Wis., McGloin moved to Arizona for college and has been here for the past 19 years.

He majored in psychol-ogy at Arizona State Uni-versity, and will be put-ting that education to good use as the school psychologist for FHHS and Fountain Hills Middle School students.

“That works out per-fectly, since I’ve got the whole middle school through high school vol-leyball program,” McGloin said.

“I get to see the kids on campus and encourage them. The middle school gym is actually getting some work done, so that team has been practicing and will have their home games at the high school.

“It’s fantastic, because they’re really being in-cluded in the Falcon vol-leyball family.”

Playing volleyball through high school, McGloin went on to coach at the high school level here in Arizona.

“I took over a program that had one of the worst records in Arizona,” McGloin continued.

“The school had won six matches in six years. But we made a lot of progress. We set school records for wins all four years that I was there and we had winning seasons the last two years, with 23 last year and 19 before that.”

McGloin said he wanted to move to Fountain Hills when he first arrived in Arizona so, when the new position opened up, he jumped at the chance.

The Falcon volleyball season began just last night with a home match against Winslow, kicking off a busy first week for the ladies. The team will travel to Barry Goldwater for a 6 p.m. match this evening before heading to a Youngker tournament this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 4-5.

After such a busy run, the Lady Falcons will have a small break from competition, returning to the court in another away match next Friday, Sept. 11, for a 6 p.m. showdown against Blue Ridge.

Along with a new coach, McGloin said the program basically boasts a new team in 2015 as well, home to a large group of underclassmen. Still, he remains confident that this could be a big year for FHHS.

“Fountain Hills’ volley-ball program still has a certain mystique about it,” McGloin said.

“[Roy] Burcham did such a great job for so many years, my goal is to kind of follow in his foot-steps and get it back to that level of success.”

To help get ready for this season, McGloin ac-tually took over the vol-leyball program in Febru-ary and started working with the ladies in open gyms.

“We had to rebuild the excitement,” he added.

“There are only nine players from varsity and JV combined that were even in the program last year, so it really is a fresh start.”

Once the ladies started to buy into the program, though, McGloin said the team quickly took off.

“We had a scrimmage against some powerhous-es, like Cactus Shadows, Ironwood and Paradise Valley,” McGloin said.

“We did really well. I hope the girls saw that we can hang with these solid teams and I hope that helped to build their con-fidence.”

McGloin said that a fu-ture goal is to make a run on the state championship but, for the time being, he and the Falcons are work-ing to make it to the end-of-season tournament once again.

“I’m amazed by how far along they’ve come,” he added.

“Going for state was a future goal, but I’m start-ing to see that this team really could do it. We’re going to be able to hang with anybody. I’m really fired up, especially after seeing how well they played last night.”

McGloin said that he’s seeing a lot more positives than negatives in practice currently, so he’s focusing on fine-tuning all areas of play and capitalizing on the team’s strengths.

“It’s going to be a chal-lenge, and we’re going to have to play at a high lev-el at all times,” McGloin added.

“But I think we’re ready for it. The program hasn’t been going to the playoffs, so that’s our first goal. We want to get there and make some noise.

“I think we’re going to be exciting to watch so, to the fans, I say come out and see us. We’ve got some strong teams com-ing out this season, so you’re going to get to see some good battles.”