PLEASANT VIEW — There was a fair bit of excitement around the Weber High volleyball program this summer before the season started.

The Warriors were fresh off a 21-win season, a fifth-place finish at the state tournament, a third-place finish in Region 1 and brought back a handful of starters and rotation players.

And they lost the first match of the year.

Fortunately for them, there were 31 matches left, and they played very well.

“I honestly just think it’s their competitive nature. We lost our first game of the year, we were up 2-0 and then got reverse-swept,” Weber High head coach Renae Birch said. “And I think that kind of set the tone of, like, I could tell it really bugged them that we lost that game — and credit to Green Canyon, they played great in those last three sets — but just kind of from that point, they just wanted to step up.”

A senior-led Weber team finished with a 26-6 overall record, won Region 1 outright by two games and took seventh place in the 6A state tournament. The Warriors are the 2023 Standard-Examiner All-Area Volleyball Team of the Year.

“I just think we had a good mix, and it was really cool to coach just a true team where everyone contributed. We had six solid players on the court every time who I trusted with the ball, so it was awesome,” Birch said. “This group is so competitive and always has been, and has always competed with the varsity players even when they were on JV, so I just knew this year was kind of the year that we could go take it.”

Five players had 100-plus kills for the Warriors, led by seniors Havi Montaño (263) and Jackie Craven (218). Four players, led by junior Katelynn Field (54), had 35-plus blocks.

They constantly rotated, playing two setters and a handful of hitters. They were steady, playing well enough to force opponents into numerous errors while simultaneously avoiding error-prone stretches themselves.

Their big strength, however, was serving and serve receive. Weber finished the year with 327 service aces.

Four players — Montaño, Josie Rich, Brooke Whitlock and Olivia Boswell — ranked Nos. 2-5 in the region for aces with a fifth, Eden Jensen, ranking ninth.

“This group, they’re very aggressive and they want to go get after it in every aspect, and then I also think that serving is such a focus of our program,” Birch said.

Since its last Region 1 triumph in 2016, Weber annually hung out in the middle or the bottom of the region. In 2021, Birch became the program’s fourth different head coach in four seasons.

The Warriors were tossed around in region play in 2021, then took sixth place in the 6A state tournament as a No. 17 seed. They were a No. 12 seed in 2022 after finishing third in the region and took fifth at the state tournament.

This year, the growth culminated in a region title and a 24-4 record in the regular season, fulfilling a goal the team had set on the first day of practice.

The first sign of a Region 1 power shift came on Sept. 26 when Weber swept two-time defending region champion Syracuse, which at the time was the Warriors’ 14th straight win.

The streak reached 21 matches at one point before a loss to Orem and the lone region loss in four sets against Farmington, the latter of which Birch said refocused the team down the stretch.

“Especially after that Farmington loss they were like, ‘Oh, we have to go put away the rest of these games and make sure we do our job,'” she said.

The Warriors had three region matches left after Farmington. They swept all three, securing them a No. 6 seed in the state tournament and setting up Weber’s best shot at a state title since 2016.

“For state, I think it was a little bit different being that higher seed. Just in preparing the girls the last couple years, I’m like, ‘Let’s just go see what we can do,'” Birch said.

The Warriors scored a late-night, five-set comeback over Copper Hills in the second round before falling to No. 3 Bingham in a match that ended after 11 p.m. They beat Herriman the next day and lost to Pleasant Grove, finishing seventh.

Even if the season ended the day before Weber wanted it to, there was still a fair bit of excitement about what had happened throughout the season.

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