Perry High is beginning to make playoff in girls volleyball a habit with their third consecutive trip to postseason. And for the first set and a quarter on Tuesday the sixth-seeded Pumas threatened  to run No. 11 Horizon out of the gym.

The match took longer than Perry envisioned from the early returns, but the Pumas eventually turned Horizon away taking a four-set victory at the Puma Den. Scores were 25-12, 18-25, 25-14, 25-19.

Perry (29-6) moves on to Thursday's quarterfinals and will travel to No. 3 Gilbert, which swept No. 14 Campo Verde in its first-round match. Horizon, which started slowly this season with injuries and inexperience, closed the year 19-20. The Huskies, a perennial playoff team no matter the division they compete in, didn't go down without causing Perry anguish.

Perry blitzed Horizon in the opening set as the score indicated. Perry was clicking in all facets and lorded its size and blocking over Horizon to the easy win. The second set began with more of the same -- a 6-1 lead and Horizon coach Valorie McKenzie moved to call an early time out to stop the carnage. That timeout worked.

In short order Horizon took its first lead of the match at 11-10 and gradually pulled away to even the match. The Huskies had to dink and dunk and use the sidelines to do it, but put together a solid set and knock the Pumas' psyche for a loop. 

"We played well the first set, but ran into ball control issues the second set," Perry coach Fred Mann said."We started struggling with serve-receive and they did a good job of being crafty. We finally started digging some of tips and got back to playing the way we can. They improved a ton from when we played them early (Sept. 3).

Perry was back to form in the third set, jumping out to a 4-0 lead and coasting to set point. Horizon pushed back in the fourth, building a 12-7 lead after a dump by setter Ashley Person. The Huskies lost steam from that point on.

 Three successive kills by Perrry and three successive hitting errors by Horizon combined for Perry to move in front, 16-14. Perry's block was forrmidable the rest of the way as was its attack. Kills by Lexi Nielsen, Ryann Davis, Kennedy Kaminsky and Taylor Knoll were good for four of the Pumas final five points.

"We made a game of it, and a lot of times this year teams looked past Horizon," Horizon coach Valorie McKenzie said. "We made a lot of improvement from the beginning of the year until now. We got back in it playing defense, but their size and blocking was too much. I thought in that fourth set we were going to be able to take it to five."

Perry's block was led by Kaminsky and Myla Durling with four each and three came from Hannah Stevenson. Knoll led the attack with 17 kills and Kaminsky and Stevenson added six apiece. NIielsen contributed three aces and 16 digs. Leading the attack for Horizon were Erin Clark (11 kills) and Karen Scanlon (10 kills).