“Our setters are older kids, but they’re pretty young as far as volleyball goes … trying to teach them how to be smart and understand where their good hitters are and where to go with the ball,” Barker said. “Working with them to be the quarterback on the court. I have an assistant coach who usually talks to the setters, but I needed to get them to focus on their specific job.”

The pep talk worked. The Darts convincingly took the third set 25-19 and rolled to a commanding lead in set four.

“Momentum is a big part of volleyball; we just had to find out how to get a little of it on our side … create energy on some plays and start to trust some of our younger players,” Barker said.

But, after racing to a five-point lead in the fourth set, the rally rutted and Davis dropped a 3-1 (25-23, 25-21, 19-25, 25-21) nonregion decision to the Knights.

“Missed serves will get you. We missed seven or eight serves in that last set, and that was the difference in the game,” Barker said. “We have to have aggressive serves but we have to get them in, too.”

Davis (1-3) only lost two players off last year’s maiden volleyball team (14-8) and returns a roster full of experienced seniors this year, coupled with a plethora of sophomores.

“That’s kind of how it shook out; we knew we were going to have a lot of returners, which is a great advantage for us. We play mostly seniors with two, three new kids mixed in,” Barker said. “A lot of these boys know what to expect because they’ve been together.”

With that in mind, Barker scheduled a challenging preseason that has included Bountiful, Clearfield, Mountain Ridge and Lone Peak (8-1).

“We did that on purpose; we know we can compete with the best teams in the state. Preseason is important for us to see where we stack up and what we need to work on to compete in region,” she said.

Predicting the region will be tricky in only the second year of boys volleyball, where trends have yet to be established.

“We have a tough Region 1; we have the expectation to win region and these early matches are going to get us there,” Barker said. “There’s a little bit of unknown because boys develop so fast and you don’t know what’s to come. … Excited for this season, for sure.”

Lone Peak and Davis were tied 21-21 in the first set before the Knights prevailed and then took a 2-0 lead before the pivotal third set when it looked like the Darts were poised for a huge comeback.

“Energy is a big thing about our team; in the third set we came out with the mindset that we didn’t want to go home, so we balled out and that’s what moved us forward,” Davis senior outside hitter Chase Valentine said.

The Darts then led 15-10 in the fatal fourth frame before collapsing with a multitude of mistakes.

“Serving errors were a big part of it. We had really low lows and high highs; we need to maintain that high level of play all the time,” Valentine said. “We need to put that ball over the net and let our defense do what it can do.”

Valentine hopes the best is yet to come for the Darts.

“Our seniors have played with each other a lot, but we do have some underclassmen who have not blended yet. By the end of the season, we’re going to be something great; we’re going to be dangerous.

“Mountain Ridge and Lone Peak are top five teams in Utah right now; everyone has underestimated us but we went out there and played some good ball (today),” Valentine added.

McKnight and Valentine smashed 11 kills each for the Darts, while Brandon Sims had 14 digs and Chase Finlinson checked in with 15 assists.

“In spite of the loss, it was a really good game for us; we learned a lot,” Barker said.