The Arbor View boys volleyball team has embodied the mindset that it would take the efforts of all 16 players to win the school its first boys volleyball title.

It proved to be the case on Wednesday night against rival Centennial in the Class 5A state championship match, and the Aggies’ efforts all season showed up in the biggest game of the season.

No. 3-seeded Arbor View claimed its first boys volleyball title with a 25-20, 25-27, 25-19, 25-19 victory over top-seeded Centennial at Sunrise Mountain.

“It feels amazing. The boys have worked hard, I don’t even know if I could put it into words,” Arbor View coach Nicole Adarme said. “Our big goal was to stay calm and collected the entire time. I just wanted to reflect that for them.”

Arbor View (28-13-1) let its emotions out after the final point on an Owen Wenger kill. The Aggies huddled and jumped for joy, helped carry injured teammate Gunnar Robinson off the bench, and eventually moved the celebration into the stands with a sea of red from the Arbor View student section.

“It feels absolutely great,” junior middle blocker/outside hitter Risden Miller said. “We trust each other so much. We’re best friends in and out of volleyball, and that really helps us on the court with just competing as a team.”

Even though the two team’s previous meeting on April 14 was a three-set win in league play by Centennial (32-6), Adarme said she knew the fourth meeting of the season for the two northwest rivals wasn’t going to be a sweep on either side.

Arbor View won a back-and-forth first set on a kill from Miller. Then it looked like the Aggies were going to win a close second set, but Centennial got a point for Arbor View being out of rotation, and the Bulldogs won four of the last five points to even the match score to one set apiece.

“That’s the traditional thing (when we play) Centennial (to play long matches), so for us, we just treated it like another set,” Adarme said. “We knew they were going to fight, so how do we respond to that? Our constant conversation was responding to the negative and moving forward in a positive direction.”

Arbor View scored six straight points in the third set to take a 20-15 lead, and the Aggies never let up to get to the fourth set with a chance to win the title. The Aggies took advantage of several Centennial errors to take the lead in the third set on their way to the title.

“We took three deep breaths and reset and recollected ourselves as a team,” Miller said of closing out the final two sets. “That’s just completely huge for rebounding from a lost set.

“For me, personally, just looking at all my best friends on the court, that truly calms me down and I know it calms them down as well.”

Miller recorded 18 kills and Wenger was key at the net with eight kills and eight blocks. The Aggies also got contributions from Graham Blanchard, Kenyon Wickliffe and Robinson before he went down with a lower left leg injury in the fourth set.

Lincoln Larson led Centennial with 19 kills. It’s the first boys volleyball state title for Arbor View and first appearance in the title game after the program reached the state semifinals four previous times.

“We can’t (win) with six, we have to do it with all 16,” Adarme said. “We’ve been training all of them to be ready for big moments and it was an amazing moment for Cooper (Ball, coming in for an injured Robinson) to be able to come in for us.

“We just had to know we couldn’t be outside of ourselves. Where we fell short in the past was trying to be more instead of focusing on what our role is and what our job is.”

Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.