Yaodong Gu is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover  the Marcos de Niza Padres for AZPreps365.com.

In an extremely close match, the Marcos de Niza girls volleyball team slipped past the Thunderbird Chiefs on Thursday night.

After losing the first set, 19-25, the Padres came back on their home court to win the next three sets, 25-23, 25-21 and 26-24.

Before the first set, Padres head coach Melissa Yee said her team is in transition between old and new.

“We have many very young players, most of them are juniors,” Yee said. “I say they are young because they don’t have enough game experience.”

 “I think we played well, but we need to focus our team movement and missed serves,” Thunderbird coach Carly Whitehead said. “We lost some points because of basic errors. That is unacceptable.

“This was a tough game. Both teams played well, but we need to learn from this failure and to see how to improve our defense.”

Yee was very satisfied with the victory.

“We are very young and we have a couple girls with injuries,” she said.

Yee gave special credit to junior Hailey White.

“Hailey is a key player,” she said. “When she was on the front row she was a dominate player.”

The Padres (3-1) will compete in the Tournament of Champions at Mesa Westwood High School this weekend.

The Chiefs (3-1) will compete in the Ceil Billings Tournament at Greenway High School on Saturday.