Regionals!

First I have to apologize for not posting anything for our last Power League at Lakeview High.  Needless to say, it wasn't our best day.... I'll leave it at that.

Now for regionals!  I'll be here for hours if I try to break down every match, every game, every great play... so I'll summarize.

We changed our line-up a bit as we moved Marin to full-time setter and Alli F to full-time RS.  We were also without the services of Emma, so we all had to step up.

Stats:
     Arrive time - 7:15 am
     Walked out of the gym - 9:15 pm
     Games played - 15
     Serving
          # of serves - 231
          # of misses - 28
          % in - 87%
          # of players > 90% - 4 (Ally G, Nikki, Tayler, Holly)

     Hitting
          # of attacks - 300
          # of kills - 65
          # of errors - 54
          Hitting % - .040
          # of games won we we hit < 0  - 1
          # of games lost when we hit > 0 - 1
          Hitting % in last match - .180
          Incredible hitting % by Emily in last match - .400

     # of teams we lost to in bracket play - 0
     # of championship t-shirts - 12
    
     Key matches - 14 Green (We won)
                           - CCVA for the championships

Everyone really stepped up and played well.  I kept challenging them to dig deep, to want it more than their opponent, to execute just one more time... and that's what they did.

Setters - Zoe and Marin.  We ran both of them ragged.  We were working them so hard that at one time it looked like they were both either going to cry or puke... or both.  Nevertheless, the stepped up and worked harder than they ever had before.

Right Side - Alli F.  The first time we put her in that position and she adapted very well... running plays, passing well and backing up the setter when they had to pass the first ball.

Outsides - Holly, Nikki, Tayler and Tasha. Nikki, Tayler and Holly all served over 90% in and Tasha kept us in the games with some incredible defense, diving to the floor over and over to get short attacks.

Middles - Emily and Alyssa hit exceedingly well, .180 and .130 respectively.  In addition, they each blocked numerous balls, squelching the attacks.

Libero - Ally once again was rock solid for us, passing a zillion balls for our setter to do their thing.  In addition, she served 93% in.

There isn't one girl one this team that didn't contribute.  I don't think we would've won unless everyone of them contributed in the way they did.

One last fact:
      Where this team ranks in my heart - #1!!!!!

Up next - Nikki's birthday on Monday.
              - Special practice next Wednesday, May 2nd.  Look for the flyer!

Go Webfoot

Norm

Salem Invitational

We went into this tournament with 2 goals:
#1 - Ball control. We tend to score all the points in a match, both ours and the other teams! We really wanted to do a better job of controlling the ball, thus cutting down on our mistakes.
#2 - Attitude. While we generally have a pretty good attitude, we tend to get a little testy when things don't go as well as we would like. We all agreed we would not let that happen.

Our pool consisted of:
Us
Salem 14 Red
Mt Hood 14 Red
Mid-Valley 14 White

Our first match was against Mt Hood 14 Red. While we didn't play poorly, we didn't play all that great... but we were solid and steady. That steadiness led us to 2 close wins, 25-23, 26-24. Individually, Emily had a great kill to win set #1, while Holly made some real clutch serves at the end of set #2 leading us to victory. Set #2 was especially satisfying since we had to make a big comeback for the win.

Match #2 was against Mid-Valley White. We had seen this team play and we realized that they were not that skilled and that we should have no problem with them... as long as we executed. We really did play pretty well as we smoked them 25-13, 25-12. The highlight of this match came in set #2 with Alyssa serving 13 straight balls... scoring aces on 6 of them! Great job Alyssa!

Our next opponent (victim?) was against Salem Red. I was a bit worryied about this match since we sometimes have a bad match against a lesser skilled team. However, my fears were unfounded as we won easily 25-12, 25-15. The highlight of this match came in set #2 wwith Ally G diving to the floor to get to a short attack, driving the ball into the net. This didn't phase Alli F as shee fought to get the ball out and up, which she did... barely getting it up, but back into the net again. However, Emily was there to again try to get the ball out and over, which she did... barely! The ball just cleared the tape to the other side, where Salem couldn't handle it, so we scored the point! It was a great effort play that all three girls participated in, leading to the point. Nice job!!

Our first place finish in pool play, led to a #2 seeding in bracket play, mathced up against Mt. Hood White. We really played well in set #1, taking the set, 25-14. I was pretty confident that we could continue the momenteum, but the errors that we've been avoiding all day finally found us. We were down big in set #2,but then finally strated to play towards the end. We made a game of it, but came up a bit short, losing 25-21. Hoping to start out quick in the short set #3 was the plan, but again we gave up too many points to start. What's becomiongs a too frequent pattern, we started coming back, but came up just short, losing 15-13. Had this been a 25 point game I'm confident that we would have one, but we have no one to blame but ourselves. We just need to learn how to not let teams get up on us... we have the comeback thing down, but we can't always rely on that!
I wasn't overly upset about the lost because Mt Hood White is the kind of team that we just don't match up well with. They don't attack all that much, but keep the ball in play. If we play well, we beat teams like this, but if we falter a bit on execution, we get beat. Our challenge is to learn how to play against teams like this... ball control!!!!
As mentioned above we had some great individual and team plays. Ally/Alli/Emily had that great save out of the net and Alyssa served the snot out of the ball and Holly delivered some clutch serving for us. Speaking of serving, we hserved about out average as a team, however Tayler served 92% in, alyssa 85% in and Alli F led them all by serving perfect for the day! Great job girls!
We kept hitting stats for the first time this tournament and did pretty well. Hitting stats are very much like a batting average in baseball. To calculate it, you subtract hitting errors from kills and then divide by the total # of attemps. Anything over .25 is good, > than .3 is great. As a team we hit .230... not bad. Nikki, Emily, Alyssa and Zoe (setter dumps!) all had % over .250 and Marin hit an eye-popping .580! We need to get her the ball more often!
Speaking of getting the hitters the ball, both our main setters Alli F and Zoe, are getting better every tournament, cutting down on the errors, getting the ball to the hitters, even if the pass is bad. All our hitters contributed... Holly had great pressure serving, Tayler had over 90% serving, Nikki hit the best as an outside, Tasha was incredibly solid and Emma is an inspiration to us all with her hustle plays and leadership. Our middles, Emily and Alyssa are scoring tons of points for us, tallying up 30 kills between them. Lastly Ally G did her thing by passing nails for us all day long.
So as far as our goals went... we met them. We did a better job of controlling the ball and we kept our heads and attitude positive all day, even when we weren't playing well.

Next up, Power League on April fools day. We'll do great!!!!!

Norm

Power League - 3/3/12

We found ourselves way up in Vancouver WA for this power league. Our pool looked like this:
1 - Us
2 - Athena
3 - OJVA
4 - NW Reign

Our first opponent was OJVA. While we didn't play bad, we just made too many untimely errors in this match. In the first set, we didn't miss a serve, but lost 25-15, in match 2, we missed 4, but only lost by 2, 26-24. The downside of this match is that Zoe went down with a ankle sprain while we were up in game 2, but kind of fell apart and gave them them win. Tasha tried to lighten things up a bit by by doing a nice spin and fall on her backside right in from of everyone!

Match 2 was against NW Reign. This team was a little tough for us as they just kept the ball in play. we would make a little run, but give it back with a run of points on them It would all depend on what team was making a run at the end. Fortunately for us, we were the ones making plays. Marin really had a nice stuff block in this match to get us fired up and Ally G made a real nice save on a badly shanked ball. Plays like that led us to a 25-20, 25-23 win.

Match 3 was against Athena. I can't say much about the match because we did so poorly, I don't know how good Athena was! We had 19 zero passes in the match and 7 missed serves... kinda hard to be competitive when we have stats like that. Needless to say, we lost 25-19, 25-13. The highlight of this match was Norm protesting a back-row attack call. The ref thought if the back-row player jumped, it was a back row attack. Of course every good 14 Silver player knows that it's the ball, not the player , that determines if it is a back-row attack. We won the protest, but obviously it didn't alter the outcome.

Our 3rd place finish in pool play pitted us against the 4th place team from the other pool, Blues VBC. Winner stays in Bronze, loser drops to Diamond.... no pressure. In what is becoming a pattern for us, we got down big right away. I called two time-outs early trying to do something to get them playing. Finally, it clicked and we started to make a dent in there lead. I was pleased that we came all the way back to make it close, losing set 1, 25-23. I knew if we kept the momentum, we would take set 2... which is exactly what we did, cruising to a 25-15 win. Set three, however is what makes my hair go gray. Once again, we spotted them 6 straight points before we scored.6!... in a 15 point game!!!! So a side out for us at 6-0 gave us a chance. Tayler-Linn went back and served an ace... then another, then a good play by us, followed by another ace. Blues called a time out to stop the bleeding, but that didn't phase us. Tayler served an amazing 10 in a row, 5 of them aces before they got a side out. So, now we're up 9-7. We pushed hard and was up 14-9 when we couldn't make a play. We shanked passes, hit in the net, free balled out... arrrgghhh! Finally, we had a scramble play were Tasha sent a tough free ball back to zone one that they couldn't return. We won 15-13, whew!!! There is a highlight here in that we served perfect, once again and won the game. So... no they don't get another dinner, but nice job anyway.

I held out Zoe (Sprain) and Emma (pulled muscle) of our very last match of the day because this match really doesn't do a whole lot as far as seeding goes. Between the players out and the mental exhaustion, we didn't play all that well and lost to OVA 25-16.

So for the day, I gave us a C+... the girls thought a B- was more appropriate, but I wouldn't budge. We are at the part of the season where we're trying to put it all together, both physically (skills, being tired) and mentally (remembering plays, working thru the exhaustion, frustrations with other players and ourselves). We'll get through it... this is an amazing group of young women that I wouldn't trade for anything, girls like these are why I keep coaching year after year.

Individual honors are too numerous to mention... but I'll give it a shot anyway! Our setters (Zoe, Alli and sometime Marin) once again did an outstanding job of hustling down errant passes and getting our hitters a chance to do their thing,.. which our hitters, Emma, Nikki, Tayler, Tasha and Holly took advantage of. We worked on "reaching high" when we were attacking and they all had their moments of glory. Ally G once again did a great job anchoring our back, passing nails over and over again. Our middles are really fantastic. They are in every play, moving this way and that, getting into position to make a kill. Alyssa is really good at hitting the deep corners while Emily is hitting harder and harder every tournament.

So, next up - The Salem Invitational. Sunday, March 18th.
Go Webfoot!!!!!

Wilson Invitational

The format for this tournament was 2 days of snake seeding followed by bracket play on the third day. One day one, We had the #2 (Roseburg 14 Black), us at #11, the #14 (Lake Tapps 14 Blue) and the #23 (Pacific 14 Crew). Sometimes when you play in "open" tournaments like this, the seeding is sometimes a guess, leading to some tough pools and some easier ones. Unfortunately for us, we had a tough pool. Both Roseburg and Pacific Crew finished in the top 8 and Lake Tapps was in the top of the Silver Division. So while we didn't play all that well on day 1, we had a really tough pool to deal with.
The first match against Lake Tapps started out pretty well. We served tough and really played pretty solid. Marin executed a perfect dump at set point to seal the win. Unfortunately, we suddenly started making tons of unforced errors in game 2 (5 missed serves and 10 zero passes!) and while we cleaned up the serves in game three, we made 9 unforced errors in the deciding 3rd set... giving Lake Tapps the 3 set win.
While disappointing, I was confident that we could play well against Pacific Crew. Unfortunately for us, this team was much, much better that their #23 seed. We played hard and had a 23-21 lead in game 1, but this time we we choked a bit toward the end of the game and ending up losing 25-23. I notable highlight in this game was a great down-the-line kill by Emma!
The poor serving we saw earlier again raised it's ugly head, with us missing 9 serves in set 2, essentially giving them the win.
Our 3rd match was against Roseburg's #1 team, and while we played OK, they really were too much for us and took the match from us 25-15, 25-21.
So, after day one we ended up #23, with no chance to get out of Diamond Division. Despite the disappointing finish, I knew we were resilient and that we would come back strong on day 2.
Day two, had OVA, YVBA and Roseburg Orange. As I suspected, the competition wasn't as tough as day one and we took advantage of it by implementing our free ball plays. While sometimes the entire team wasn't on the same page, we did finally get the hang of it and executed plays successfully by the end of the day. Match one against OVA, wasn't much of a match as we cruised to a 25-12, 25-15 victory.
Our next victim was YVBA that gave us a defense that we hadn't seen before. What they did was that they never blocked, instead they just dropped the front row back to play short tips and off-speed attacks. While this sometimes works, you still have to make plays and YVBA just couldn't put it together and we won 25-17, 25-11.
Our last match was against Roseburg's #2 team, Roseburg Orange. The long layoff coupled with easy matches in the morning led to us not playing all that well in set one. We ended up losing 25-17. I talked with team about just playing solid... we didn't have to do anything special, just play solid. The team responded well by doing just that and cruised to a set 2 AND set 3 win. We only missed one serve over the last 2 games and played pretty well. We had a great play were Tayler had to dive to the floor to get to a short ball and while she got to it, it went straight into the net. Zoe didn't seem to care because she dug it out of the net and got it up to Tayler, who was still trying to get back up. She did get up and managed to get it back over the net. We eventually won the point on a great hustle play.. Nice job girls!
So on day three, we were the 2 seed in our division, so we had a bye. I really didn't like the schedule since we had a bye, then ref, then were off, then finally play at 11. On top of that we had all morning to think about who we got to play, Webfoot 14 Green. A match-up with a supposedly lower team is always tough because the "lower" team has nothing to lose, while we get all freaked out about it. So while we served well (missed only 2 the entire match), the rest of our game was shaky. Coupling that with 14 Green playing really well... and you wend up with a 3 set loss. While very disappointing, we did learn a thing or two about being on a team, like we win as a team and we lose as a team... we don't win because of an individual and we don't lose because of an individual. I still go back to the Friedrich Nietzsche quote "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger", and no, it's not a Kelly Clarkson quote!
So while it was a trying tournament for us, remember we are in it for the long run. The things we're working on will make us better in the future... things like 9 different zone serves, 5 different play sets and three defensive schemes with "read" responsibilities. All these things are relatively advanced volleyball concepts. So while learning all this, we invariably will struggle with them at first.
Individually, everyone had great moments and plays. Our middles once again played well, with Emily and Alyssa being in on all the plays. They really started to get the mechanics down and hopefully will get more comfortable in their responsibilities. Alyysa really had a great serving day on day 3... while not getting any aces, the opposing team really had trouble with them. This is especially satisfying since I wouldn't let her serve one day 2 after a foot fault!
Our Libero Ally did well once again. She struggled a bit on day one, but bounced back well on day 2 and 3. She particularly stood out by not missing any serves on day 2 or 3.
We only had Nikki for for the third day, so she didn't have much of a chance for her to shine, but she played well while in there. Our other outsides, Emma, Tayler, Holly and Tasha all did well. Tayler wow'd us by only missing one serve the entire tournament and Tasha got on the bandwagon by serving 12 straight against OVA on day 2. Emma got a hold of a couple of balls when attacking and really put them down with authority. Holly was very solid, keeping the ball in play when necessary and attacking hard when the set was great.
Our setters really shined this tournament. Marin, Zoe and Alli really mixed up the offense, keeping everyone involved. Marin and Zoe each had a few dump kills, while Alli F did a great job getting the balls nice and high for our hitters. We're very lucky to have three very good setters on our team.

So, next up, Power League. Prairie High School in Vancouver WA.

Go Webfoot!

Rose City Invite

1/22/12, We found ourselves at the Boys and Girls Club in Milwaukie Oregon.
I knew this would be a tough tournament because PVC, OJVA and Rose City always send their top teams. In fact, the tournament had PVC's top two teams, Rose City's top two teams, along with Rose City's top 12 team. Of course, there was also Webfoot's top 2 teams.

Our pool had:
OJVA Gold (Their #1 team)
Rose City Gold (Their #2 team)
PVC Green (Their #2 team)
Us

Our first opponent was against Rose City Gold, a very good Gold level team currently rated #2 in CEVA (for reference, we're 15th). Not much to say about this match, other than Rose City was a very tough serving team and we just didn't respond well to the challenge. We went down pretty easily, 25-8, 25-10.

Our next opponent, OJVA wasn't any easier, considering they are ranked #3 in CEVA. Pretty much the same story... we didn't pass well and ending up losing 25-17, 25-12. Although we got beat, there was some spark from the girls. They were starting to make some hustle plays that helped everyone pick up their own game. The one I remember was when after a time-out, Marin told me she really wanted to get a block... not two plays later she did get one, not a full blown stuff, but a tip block, but a block nonetheless. OJVA managed to keep the ball in play and made a great attack that we managed to get to, but passed it into the net. That didn't deter Zoe, who dug it out of the net, setting it up perfectly for Alyssa, who took advantage of the situation by executing a great deep corner kill.

Our last opponent in pool play was PVC Green, their #2 team. I was pretty leery of this team because they are usually pretty good that always seemed to play great against us. I think it's a bit of a rivalry thing between myself and the PVC coach. We've played many times over the years with each of us taking about the same amount of wins, so we each we're motivated to win. Unfortunately for them, their team is quite a bit weaker than they had been in the past and we stepped up and took care of them in game one, 25-18. The highlight of this game was that we served another perfect game (no, they don't get ANOTHER dinner!)

Game two was a little different in that PVC just kept hanging around, and eventually got to 24-24. We were calm and determined and finally took the last two points for the win, 26-24.
Our 1-2 finish earned us the #3 spot in our pool... the same as our sister team, Webfoot Gold had. I knew if they won their first match in the afternoon and if we won ours, we would face each other. I didn't tell the girls that, although a couple of them figured it out. First we had to beat a historically tough Rose City 12's. I say tough because I had never beat them outright (I split with them last year). They always do what we coaches call "ball control you to death". They play great defense and keep the ball in play until the opposing team makes a mistake. Fortunately, we are a pretty good team that would have nothing to do with that, and they were not very strong this year. Consequently we cruised to a 25-16, 25-13 win.
That win pitted us against 14 Webfoot Gold (of course!). We were pretty pumped up for the match and it showed because we played the best we had all day. Even though 14 Gold served really tough, we nailed our passes pretty well. We served tough and played hard the entire match, but 14 Gold was a little too tough for us. So while we ended up losing 25-17, 25-16, i was happy with our effort and, for the most part, our execution. The reason I say "for the most part" is because while we lost by about 8 points, that really means that there was a 4 point difference. If we had made 4 more plays, that's 4 points we would get and 4 less points for 14 Gold. So instead of of 25-17, it would have been 21-21... any one's game.

Nonetheless I was pretty happy with our play. While we didn't give Rose City Black or OJVA much of a match, we took care of teams ranked below us and played Webfoot 14 Gold pretty well.
As a team, we served pretty well, getting 89.4% in. (One less miss and we would have hit our 90% goal). Not only did we get 89% in, we served a tough 1.93. (A score of 2 or greater is great).
An area of improvement would be our passing. As a team, we passed a weak 1.3 for the day. (Our goal is 1.8). The teams we played had a lot to do with this, but we need to be able to step up and do a better job on serve receive.

Individually we really did some great things. First, we had 6 girls serve over 90% in. Tasha, Zoe, Nikki all were over the 90% mark and Marin, Tayler and Emily all served perfect for the day. I don't think I've ever had 6 girls over 90% and I know I've never had 3 girls serve perfect. Looks like all the serving practice is paying off. Also worth mentioning is Alyssa, who took her 63% in at the last tournament to over 82% in for this tournament.

Our Libero, Ally G, again had a solid day. She did much better at getting down and staying down and therefore got to quite a few more balls. Again, as in the last tournament, she passed more than twice as many balls as any other player, which is a good thing since she's such a good passer!

Our other outsides Emma (sometimes RS) and Holly had good games. Holly continued to nail the zone serves that I gave her and Emma really hit well. We teased Emma a bit in the match against Rose City 12 because Emma hit a ball pretty hard that hit a little 4th grader before she could even move.
Our setters, Zoe and Alli F did a great job getting to all those errant passes, running all over the court and digging balls out of the net. We are very lucky to have such good setters on this team... actually we have 3 as Marin steps in and does a wonderful job in one of our rotations.

So next up, Power League at the Courts in Beaverton, Sunday, Feb 5th. I will be in the Galapagos islands, so Kandice will have the team. I'm sure we'll play great, I can't wait to hear about all the great plays!

Go Webfoot!
Norm

Jan 8th Power League

Our first tournament finally got here! It was the Power League Qualifier. All it does is seed the teams into upcoming power leagues. It's like no other tournament in that there is really no bracket play... you play pool play in the am, then 2 rounds of crossover matches in the afternoon. In the am pool, you take over the seed of the team that was in that position. Our pool had:

2 - PVC Red

15- Us

18 - Mid-Valley

31 - Blues Power

So if we ended up first, we would get the #2 spot, 2nd... the #15 spot, 3rd... the #18 spot, 4th... the #31 spot. Obviously, 1st would be fantastic, 2nd... great, 3rd... not so hot, 4th ... disaster.

Then after morning play, we would play teams from the other pool. We ended up playing the #3 and the #10 team. Whew... got it?

The first match was against the #31, Blues Power. This match was really dangerous because if we tanked it, we would be in a hole that would be hard to dig out of. Fortunately, we played pretty well. We only missed one serve in game one, and didn't miss any in game two (earning them a dinner at Kabuki's). We didn't play poorly, yet didn't play great either. I think our hustle on the 50/50 plays (plays that could go either way) pushed us past them. We won game 1, 25-21... a little too close for my taste, but OK since we started out 0-5. Game two was pretty tight also, until about 18-15. During a Blues time out I told the girls that the Blues would get the ball back and that we would have to get it right back. Little did I know we would score 7 straight to win 25-15! Alyssa really played well with her kills and blocks in this match... her kills and blocks inspired the rest of the team to step up their game also.

Our second match was also critical in that there wasn't much separation in seeding between us and Mid-Valley. (15 vrs 18). Fortunately for us, we played better in this match and cruised to a comfortable 2 game win, 25-17, 25-19. What paced us was some timely serving runs, where we would serve 4 or 5 in a row, giving us separation that we would need when we struggled. All in all, a good match. We were inspired by Holly trying to pass a ball off her faced (she failed), bringing a little levity to the match.

Our last match was against the #2 team, PVC Red. While we ended up losing to them, 18-25, 16-25, I was pretty pleased on how they fought the whole time. We decided to turn loose some jump serving and Zoe took the challenge well and put a clinic scoring 3 aces in a row. She also saw a huge defensive hole on the PVC side and simply free-balled the ball to that spot for an easy bump-kill. Nice job Zoe!

Our 2nd place finish secured our #15 seed, with the only thing that could happen is that we would move up. So our 1st cross-over was against Rimrock, the #3 seeded team. Again, we played well against a higher ranked team, but just couldn't seal the deal. So while losing 20-25, 21-25, I was encouraged because we played a "Gold" level team pretty close. Alli F did a couple of great things in this match... first she got to hit from the RS in one rotation and got her first kill of the season with her first swing. She also made a great hustle play, going to the floor to get an errant pass... she got the ball up and we eventually got the point. Great job Alli!

As it happened, we ended up playing our sister team in the final cross-over. After some good-natured trash talking we took them on. Unfortunately, we really laid an egg in the first game. I really don't think we were overly intimidated, we just had some bad breaks and didn't play all that well. 14 Gold really did well in taking advantage of us and cruised to a 25-9 win. I didn't dwell a whole lot on the loss as I wanted to regain some confidence in game two. Once we started playing game 2 and hung with them for the first 10 points or so, the team realized that they really could beat them if they played solid and with confidence. After siding out with each other all the way to us being ahead 24-23. 14 Gold got the next side out, but we really pushed through, scoring the next 2 points to take a 26-24 win. The win was really exciting for us.... with everyone contributing. Zoe and Holly's serves really paced us, and we all got a lift from Emily's great block.

The quick game three was much like game two, but 14 Gold just made a play here and there that we didn't respond to, so we ended up losing 10-15. Nonetheless, I really liked how tough we played against "Gold" level teams... it bodes well for us.

So we ended up right where we started... #15 in the region, Silver Division (there are 127 teams in our league). We're in the same division as 14 Gold, so we may see them again (watch out!)

As mentioned before, the team served perfectly in set #2 of match #1, earning them a dinner on me. For the day we served 85% in, with an average "serve score" of 2.0. A serve score of 2.0 or greater means we served tough... now the challenge is to get the in % up to my target of 90% as a team... and keep the serve score at 2.0 or better. A couple of the girls hit the +90% in, with Tasha at 91% and Zoe getting in an eye-popping 96%. We had 5 girls with serve scores over 2.0, Ally G, Tasha, Zoe, Marin and Holly all had +2.0 scores with Marin taking top honors scoring 2.35. Nice job girls.

Our other tracked stat is passing. It's a score that measures how well we do on serve receive. Here we have a lot of room for improvement. I have a goal of passing at least a 1.75. For the day, we passed at 1.57... as I said, a lot of room for improvement. Another telling stat is that we recorded 33 "zero" passes... these are passing attempts where the other team scored an ace. The 33 zero passes out of the 158 attempts represent a 1 out of every 5th pass will be a zero pass. Ouch... anyone want to guess as to what we'll be doing a lot of in practice???? While those numbers are not good, we did have 3 players pass above the 1.75 mark... Tayler passed an even 2.00, Holly passed a 2.13 and Alyssa passed a 2.25. Nice work girls.

Our setters, Alli and Zoe did a great job for us, distributing the ball well to all the offensive players. Usually at this age, the setters always set the middle (because it's the easiest set), but not these two... they set the 5 (outside) and the 9 (right side) well, keeping everyone engaged in the games. Alli even got a chance to attack and got a kill from the right side and Zoe contributed with a couple of excellent timely dumps.

Our full-time right side, Marin was great, especially her serving. Emma and Tayler played OH and RS and did a really good job keeping the responsibilities of each straight. Having players that play multiple positions is a mental challenge that these girls accepted and performed admirably.

Our other OH's Holly, Tasha and Nikki also did well. Even though Holly can't pass off her face very well, she showed us how to make a pressure packed serve (game 2 against 14 Gold) and played well all day. As mentioned earlier, Tasha served a great 91% in and got numerous kills. Nikki contributed by playing really solid all day. contributing in all parts of the game with respectable scores in serving, passing as well as attacking well.

Our middles, Emily and Alyssa were awesome. Numerous blocks and kills were recorded by each... I'm really excited to have 2 really good middles with tons of potential

Lastly, our Libero Ally G was great. She was the passer on 58 of the 158 balls served at us, which is more than twice as many as any other player.

So, all in all, I think we did great. I'm really excited for this team 's future as we did really well in certain areas. We do have a lot to work on, but their skill at this point is pretty good. With that said, what I really like about this team is the way they've come together as a team. They really seem to have clicked as a group and really have a good time. While there were some communication errors, that will get cleaned up as they play more.

The following picture is an example of what I'm talking about. I love it!





So next up, the Rose City Invite on Sunday, Jan 22nd. Can't wait!!!

Go Webfoot!!!!

XMAS Break

We've had a great couple of practices... can't wait to play someone! We're going thru line-ups and rotations, which is really boring for the girls, but trust me, at the first tournament they'll be lost!
The girls were a bit confused about practices over the break. I will have practices every Mon and Wed, even the ones after XMAS and New Years. I told the girls that if they are in town and not doing anything to come to practice, but DO NOT change plans because of a practice. The XMAS break is for family time and I want to respect that. There will be 6 more months of practices, so don't feel guilty about missing any.
I posted Santa hat pictures on our webpage, check them out!

That's about it for now... Go Webfoot!!!