4A high school volleyball championship: Comeback completes Timpview's unlikely title run

OREM — Every team talks about wanting to win a state championship.

But after three years of wanting and wishing, Timpview head coach Kristen Bailey told her team even the deepest desire just wasn't enough.

"I said, 'Ladies, we need to practice like state champions if that's our goal'," said Bailey after the T-birds came back from a two-set deficit to defeat region-rival Salem Hills 22-25, 22-25, 25-18, 25-22, 16-14. "They draw (this confidence) from working so hard. We've had two-a-days all season."

The T-birds committed to getting up early two days a week for a few extra hours of refining the skills that would win them the 4A state title Saturday night at UVU's UCCU Center.

"It was coach's idea, but we all jumped right on it," said Jessie Jorgensen, who earned All-Tournament MVP honors with one solid performance after another. "We knew we needed the extra work."

Bailey said trying to convince players they were capable of great things was difficult in the face of the reality they lived every season. In each of the past three seasons, the team won just a single region game.

"We've worked constantly for the last three years to change that mentality," she said. "It's not an easy thing to do."

She tirelessly started a club program, reached out to feeder schools and programs. This year, the team started better than they had in years.

"For a team trying to turn things around, getting those early season wins was crucial," Bailey said. "Once we started winning, they started believing. It wasn't, 'Wouldn't it be nice to win.' Winning became an expectation."

So a team that hadn't been to the 4A tournament in 13 years earned a berth into the state championship match with a semifinal win over Skyline. And then, rather quickly, the T-birds lost the first two sets of the title match Saturday night.

The Skyhawks owned the first two sets of the match thanks to tremendous hitting by junior outside Macky Treanor.

But Bailey reminded them of other teams, in this very tournament, that had been down 0-2 and then come back to win. One of them was standing on the other side of the net from them.

The T-birds admitted to a few doubts when they were down two sets to a team that had already beaten them twice in region play.