Jose Rodriguez joined the Mountain View boys volleyball team as a freshman in the program’s third year of existence and persevered through a 2-17 season in 2023.
He considered transferring, but a coaching change before his sophomore year led to his return to the team for another season, and eventually his entire high school career.
When longtime Loveland girls coach Sonja deBord took over the young program, which represents all of the Thompson School District, it signaled change and optimism for a concept still trying to gain traction.
It was deBord who convinced Rodriguez to stay. She wanted him to have trust in her and buy in to the vision she had for the program.
“The fact that he came back after his freshman year and bought into me his sophomore year; when I met him that summer, he was thinking about transferring somewhere else and I just said, ‘Just trust me,'” deBord said. “He came back his sophomore year, and he trusted me, and I put a lot on him to build a team and to build guys and not make it about himself. And he did.”
Rodriguez wanted to carry the team. His new coach told him he didn’t have to do that.
The team won only two games his sophomore year as well, but then things drastically improved. The Mountain Lions went 14-11 last season. Not only did they win twice as many matches as they did in their first four seasons combined, but they qualified for a regional for the first time.
Rodriguez remembers the coaching change and believes it is one of the reasons the team has begun to have success. After sweeping Campion Academy on Monday, the Mountain Lions are off to a 13-0 start this season.
“I think it was definitely a coaching change, but definitely also a player change,” Rodriguez said. “For my freshman year, a lot of mentalities were just to play volleyball and try to have fun with it. But as we’ve grown and changed coaches, I think that new mentality of being able to be competitors in high-level volleyball is just amazing.”
The freshman who considered transferring is now in his senior year, and looking back, his freshman self would never have imagined the team would be undefeated halfway through his last season.
Mountain View’s success this season can be attributed to building off last season’s accomplishments. Instead of coming into the season after winning only two matches the year before, the team came in having experienced the taste of a winning season and what playing in the postseason is like.
“It was completely different,” Rodriguez said. “Being able to come in this year and being able to say we’re ready to win and were ready to do this, just means a lot. For me personally, as I experienced the first two years of my career not being so great, it has definitely been a change that I am very happy about.”
Mountain View hasn’t just won its first 13 matches this season; the Mountain Lions have only last four sets along the way. Two of those came last week in a five-set thriller against Windsor Charter Academy that kept their undefeated streak intact and also showed they could handle adversity.
The Mountain Lions lost the first set and were down 2-1 before winning the fourth set 26-24 and the fifth 15-10.
“It was the game of all games in my opinion,” senior Gabe Victor said. “To lose the first set and then battle back, then lose again and then battle back again and then pull through at the end, it’s like a feeling you can’t put into words.”
When deBord took over the program, her goal was to turn it around. In her third season, it is safe to say she has accomplished that. The team has not only improved on the court, but it has grown as well. For the first time since the program started, it features a junior varsity squad.
Mountain View’s next victory will match last year’s win total, and the one after that will surpass it.
“That was their expectation in the district, that I would change it around,” deBord said. “That first year, when I had seven guys show up, I was like, it’s hard to change something like that around. The guys that I did have, they committed to themselves. They committed to the program and the sport. And they’re the ones that have grown it.”
A contributing factor has been that with player retention and experienced leadership at the top, deBord is able to coach strategy more than fundamentals.
Another has been trust.
“We don’t really have one standout, where before it was like that one or two guys put pressure on themselves and the team put pressure on them,” deBord said. “Now they pretty much trust each other. They’re not running into each other. They’re not trying to take somebody’s ball. They believe in each other, and they believe what we are doing as a program.”
Mountain View is currently ranked No. 3 in CHSAA’s Selection & Seeding Index for Class 4A, the program’s highest ranking ever. It will face its biggest test of the season so far when it travels to No. 7 Stargate School on Wednesday.
Win or lose, Rodriguez is grateful he stuck around and is getting to enjoy the team’s success this season, something he never thought could happen when he was a freshman three years ago.
“I thought it was going to be the same thing,” he said. “I was just trying to have fun. With how everything changed and everything happened, I’m very grateful that all that happened to be able to be real competitors.”
