Park City High School Miners girls volleyball fell to the Provo Bulldogs on Tuesday night three sets to two. Photo: TownLift // Michele Roepke

PARK CITY, Utah — On Tuesday night at home inside the Park City High School, the girls of the varsity volleyball team lost to Provo two sets to three in a close, and thrilling game.

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All photos: TownLift // Michele Roepke

Nine Park City seniors, and one junior on the roster won the first set with help from lone freshman, Ryan Dubois, with her mom, dad, and grandma in the stands, and the Provo Bulldogs then won the second of what turned out to be five sets. The Miners were attempting to better their preseason game results against both Brighton and Maple Mountain which ended the same as this final result.

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The start of Tuesday’s third set saw the Miners tied at six points after PC got one then Provo got one and so on and so forth. Before they knew it it was tied at 13. Miners pulled away to a 21 to 14 lead with a final score in the third of Park City 25 winning by the two points needed, to the Bulldogs’ 16, making it two sets to one, Miners up.

Fourth set started out tied at 3 and later the Miners were down 9 to 15 then down further 20 points to 13. Although Park City prevented them from winning their set point, twice, Provo won the fourth with a 25 to 16 and then it was two sets to each team going into the fifth and final set of the night.

Sabine Smith had a strong performance on the court with powerful plays for Park City as were all of her teammates’ communicating supportively and strategically with one another throughout the competition. Provo took their first time out in the set when they were ahead 9 to 7, and the Miners took theirs when they were up 11 to 10. Park City then took their second and final time out when they had a higher score of 13 to 12. It then tied up on the scoreboard at 14 a piece getting the loud crowd out of their seats as whichever team who was about to take the “W” needed to do it at 15 points and ahead by two points. The following two match points didn’t come to fruition before the Provo Bulldogs won the night, 16 to 14 in an exciting yet difficult defeat for the Miners.

It was a bit of a battle between two new head coaches, neither of whom have been in said position for their respective teams in previous years. For Park City’s coach, Bethany Meyers, although she is new to working in the Park City girls volleyball the head coach spot, she’s not new to living in Park City. She’s coached for different teams in her career, since playing at her own high school in California followed by two years on the volleyball team at U.C. Santa Barbara and two years at USC.

“Tonight was a tough battle,” She told TownLift in between saying ‘No, Thank YOU’ to the many athletes, parents and colleagues coming up to her after the game. “There were a few major strides of improvement made across the board, so we will definitely take some lessons from this experience and apply them in practice and into the future. I’m excited for the season as this varsity squad has a lot of enthusiasm and a ton of tenacity.”

The new head coach of the Provo Bulldogs, Stephanie Magalei told TownLift, “As great as this win feels, and as proud of these athletes I am, we still have a bunch of work to do but we’re getting better every day. I want to thank all the spectators who joined us in Park City for this road game, we have a great tribe supporting us.”

Almost as fun as the game itself, was the unofficial dancing by students and singing along to every single word when a song was played by Taylor Swift. The P.A. announcer for Park City, a man who announces all the sports and genders and has famously done so for decades, wasn’t the only public person that day, on a global basis, to utter into a microphone referencing the fun fact that mere hours earlier Pop Star Swift and her boyfriend NFL football player Travis Kelce had literally broke the internet by announcing that they were as of today, engaged.