No. 6 Mica Mountain beat No. 7 Saguaro 3-1 at home Thursday night to advance to the 4A state championship match for the second time in three years. The Thunderbolts will face top-seeded Ironwood Ridge Saturday afternoon at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum with the Nighthawks taking out No. 4 Cactus 3-1 in the other semifinal match.

This will be the first championship for either program regardless of which team comes out on top with Ironwood Ridge taking second place in 20024 and 2014 under longtime head coach Bill Lang. Lang started the program at Ironwood Ridge and he has 834 career victories while Amy Johnson started the program at Mica Mountain and she has 850 career victories in the state of Arizona with prior stops at Salpointe and Sabino. Johnson led the boys of Salpointe to second place finishes in 2001 and 2011.

Beyond that, Johnson was the architect that laid the foundation for the future successes at Salpointe and Lang was instrumental in starting boys volleyball in the state of Arizona as a high school player at Canyon del Oro. Ironwood Ridge is 5-2 against Mica Mountain dating back to 2024 when the Nighthawks were placed in the 4A Conference from the 5A level. The Thunderbolts knocked Ironwood Ridge out of the state playoffs that first year en route to a championship appearance but the Nighthawks have reeled off four straight victories againt Mica Mountain, including two this year.

Mica Mountain (25-12) took out No. 2 Thunderbird in an epic five-set quarterfinal match on the road Tuesday night to set up one more home game after Saguaro (30-8) defeated No. 2 American Leadership Academy-Queen Creek in another five-set outing.

Mica Mountain jumped out to an 18-8 lead in the first set before taking it 25-11 to go up 1-0 on Saguaro and the Thunderbolts pulled away from a 14-14 tie in in the second set to win it 25-20. The third set proved more competitive between the two powerhouse programs with Saguaro building an early 9-5 only to see Mica Mountain tie it up 14-14.

The Thunderbolts went up 20-17 and it looked like the team would coast from there but Nylah Bibby came up with a block to switch momentum and her kill later in the set would tie it up 22-22. Aubrey Necas put Ironwood Ridge up 23-22 but a kill from Sloan Kribel and another from Mikayla Procopio put the Sabercats up 24-23 and the team would win it 25-23 to cut the lead down to 2-1.

The Thunderbolts jumped out to what looked like another comfortable lead in the deciding set at 12-6 but Bibby put down three more kills to pace the Sabercats to a run that would tie the set up 18-18 but that’s when Necas took over. The Idaho State commit put down five of her game-high 25 kills down the stretch to put the Thunderbolts up 23-21 and then Haley Holbrook scored to make it 24-21. Necas received the ball on the next play and Cassidy Dickherber set her for the winning kill at 25-21.

“This squad, they just fight, they really work hard,” Johnson said after the match. “Sometimes they lose it mentally but they always find a way to fight back, they're just really gritty.”  

Necas had an unofficial 25 kills on the night, Holbrook had nine and McKenna Mallard had eight. Dickherber had 25 assists and Mia Parker had 20. For Saguaro, Kribel had 20 kills and Bibby had 14. Bella Nicholas has 17 assists and Anissa Quezada Hughes had 18. Bibby is a University of Arizona commit.