Since the girls have served numerious perfect games, I owed them a nice dinner out. So they got all gussied up (who knew they cleaned up so nicely?) and we had a great time at Kabuki's on Wednesday. Check out the pics on our Webfoot page
http://www.webfootjuniors.com/Photos/Photo%20Galleries/14Silver/Kabukis/index.htm
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Regionals
This tournament is structured a little different than any other we've been in. It's setup so that 2 divisions actually cross play each other. So if your in the higher division, you have a chance of playing down and if your in the lower division, you have a chance of moving up.
In out pool, there was us, Blues Power, Vancouver Lightning and West Valley Juniors. Our first match, against Vancouver Lightning, was a tough one for us. Although I felt we are a better team, Vancouver put a great game together, while we played pretty poorly. Our serving was OK, missing 4 over the whole match... not good, not bad. However our serve receive really struggled and consequently, they beat us in 25-16, 25-22. About the only highlight of the match was a great one arm pass that came from Rachel. There was a great tip by Vancouver Lightning that almost hit the floor, but our girls kind of all dove for it, managing to get it up a little. Our second contact was another "barely got it up" pass. So, although Rachel was on the ground from the first scramble, she saw the ball falling to the ground and put an arm on it, muscling it over for a great bump-kill.
The loss put us in a precarious position, having to beat Blues and West Valley in order to stay in Bronze Division. West Valley was a really young team and we handled them pretty easily, 25-9, 25-18. We pretty much served them off the court in game one and continued it into game two, although we allowed them to score 5 straight before we closed them out.
So on to the Blues, a team that beat us in our last power league, but one we had beat before. Sometimes I tell the girls about important matches and sometimes I don't. This time I opted to let them know that if they won, we stay in Bronze, if we lose we go to Diamond. The strategy seemed to backfire in that we went out and missed 6 serves in the first game! That poor performance made the game very tough and we on to lose 25-18. Between games, I got on them a bit about the serving. I told them, play hard, get your serves in and be smart... do that and I would be happy. While they did make me happy by doing all that, we ended up losing 25-23. So on to Diamond Division.
Needless to say, we were pretty disappointed, but understood that it was our own doing. So after the break, we went to bracket play. The way bracket play worked was the first game either sent you into the winners bracket or the consolation bracket. Taking one match at a time, we obviously vowed to go to the winners side. Our opponent was North Pacific Smack. They were a decent team, but in the end we were a better team winning 25-21, 25-15. With the win, we secured 25th thru 28th.
Our next opponent was PVC Green, a team we barely beat a couple of power leagues ago (remember the 2 time-out/sub situation? That was them). Like last time, the games were very tight. We took the first 26-24 and they took the second, 25-19. I was pretty confident going into game three as we had played pretty well in the past third games. Unfortunately, we put ourselves in a quick hole, unable to serve receive. While we played hard and missed zero serves, we ended up on the short end, 15-9. If it's any consolation PVC Green went on to win the division.
So, while we were disappointed with our play, I felt we played pretty well (except against Vancouver Lightning). We ended up 28th in our region (out of 117), not where we had hoped to be, but not bad.
Since I always talk about our Libero last, I'll change it up and talk about her first. Courtney is so awesome, coming out of nowhere to pass short balls perfectly to our setters. In addition she has never served below 90% (the only one one on the team to do this) and is getting more and more kills from the "pipe".
Our setters hustled their rear ends all over getting to errant passes. Sky hit a personal all time high in serving, getting 95% in (a team high). Kayla upped her serve percentage over her last game and got her first outside block. Molly even joined the blocking party by getting a touch!
Our outsides (Kelli, Sidney, Laina and Karson) had a very consistent day attacking, getting more confident with their swing. There was a point in the game against West Valley that the opposing coach took her right back and put her in the middle of the court to counteract the dump (leaving zone 1 wide open). I pointed this out to the outsides and they promptly made them pay by hitting more down the line. Serving wise, Laina was just under the 90% mark while Karson was just over. Kelli made some great scramble plays and Sidney always an awesome defensive player.
Our middles, Amanda and Rachel played well, especially in blocking andserving. I think Rachel got a block in every match (game?). Both of them served in for all-time highs over 90% helping the team to hit a team high 88.7%.
So again, dispite our finish, these girls are the best. They are very coachable and truely like each other. I wouldn't trade them withe anyone.
Next up Dinner at Kabukis!
In out pool, there was us, Blues Power, Vancouver Lightning and West Valley Juniors. Our first match, against Vancouver Lightning, was a tough one for us. Although I felt we are a better team, Vancouver put a great game together, while we played pretty poorly. Our serving was OK, missing 4 over the whole match... not good, not bad. However our serve receive really struggled and consequently, they beat us in 25-16, 25-22. About the only highlight of the match was a great one arm pass that came from Rachel. There was a great tip by Vancouver Lightning that almost hit the floor, but our girls kind of all dove for it, managing to get it up a little. Our second contact was another "barely got it up" pass. So, although Rachel was on the ground from the first scramble, she saw the ball falling to the ground and put an arm on it, muscling it over for a great bump-kill.
The loss put us in a precarious position, having to beat Blues and West Valley in order to stay in Bronze Division. West Valley was a really young team and we handled them pretty easily, 25-9, 25-18. We pretty much served them off the court in game one and continued it into game two, although we allowed them to score 5 straight before we closed them out.
So on to the Blues, a team that beat us in our last power league, but one we had beat before. Sometimes I tell the girls about important matches and sometimes I don't. This time I opted to let them know that if they won, we stay in Bronze, if we lose we go to Diamond. The strategy seemed to backfire in that we went out and missed 6 serves in the first game! That poor performance made the game very tough and we on to lose 25-18. Between games, I got on them a bit about the serving. I told them, play hard, get your serves in and be smart... do that and I would be happy. While they did make me happy by doing all that, we ended up losing 25-23. So on to Diamond Division.
Needless to say, we were pretty disappointed, but understood that it was our own doing. So after the break, we went to bracket play. The way bracket play worked was the first game either sent you into the winners bracket or the consolation bracket. Taking one match at a time, we obviously vowed to go to the winners side. Our opponent was North Pacific Smack. They were a decent team, but in the end we were a better team winning 25-21, 25-15. With the win, we secured 25th thru 28th.
Our next opponent was PVC Green, a team we barely beat a couple of power leagues ago (remember the 2 time-out/sub situation? That was them). Like last time, the games were very tight. We took the first 26-24 and they took the second, 25-19. I was pretty confident going into game three as we had played pretty well in the past third games. Unfortunately, we put ourselves in a quick hole, unable to serve receive. While we played hard and missed zero serves, we ended up on the short end, 15-9. If it's any consolation PVC Green went on to win the division.
So, while we were disappointed with our play, I felt we played pretty well (except against Vancouver Lightning). We ended up 28th in our region (out of 117), not where we had hoped to be, but not bad.
Since I always talk about our Libero last, I'll change it up and talk about her first. Courtney is so awesome, coming out of nowhere to pass short balls perfectly to our setters. In addition she has never served below 90% (the only one one on the team to do this) and is getting more and more kills from the "pipe".
Our setters hustled their rear ends all over getting to errant passes. Sky hit a personal all time high in serving, getting 95% in (a team high). Kayla upped her serve percentage over her last game and got her first outside block. Molly even joined the blocking party by getting a touch!
Our outsides (Kelli, Sidney, Laina and Karson) had a very consistent day attacking, getting more confident with their swing. There was a point in the game against West Valley that the opposing coach took her right back and put her in the middle of the court to counteract the dump (leaving zone 1 wide open). I pointed this out to the outsides and they promptly made them pay by hitting more down the line. Serving wise, Laina was just under the 90% mark while Karson was just over. Kelli made some great scramble plays and Sidney always an awesome defensive player.
Our middles, Amanda and Rachel played well, especially in blocking andserving. I think Rachel got a block in every match (game?). Both of them served in for all-time highs over 90% helping the team to hit a team high 88.7%.
So again, dispite our finish, these girls are the best. They are very coachable and truely like each other. I wouldn't trade them withe anyone.
Next up Dinner at Kabukis!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Last Power League
For our last Power League we finally got to stay close to home by playing at the Regional Sports Center in Springfield! Yay!
While the format was the same as all our other Power Leagues, the end result had very little to do with our seeding in Regionals. The reason is that Regionals' seeding is determined by points, not your finish during this tournament. In all Power League tournaments, teams accumulate points based on their finish. For example, we received 495, 495 and 490 points for a total of 1,480 points. The team directly beneath us, Blues Power, had 485, 480 and 505 for a total of 1,470 points. So, although Blues Power finished ahead of us in this tournament (4th vs 7th), we finished higher for Regionals because we had a higher point total. This is also why Canby finished 15th overall (we finished 20th). Although they had finished 8th in EVERY Power League, they had enough point to get into the top 16... because they started out 6th. They had 565, 525 and 485 for a total of 1,575 points. In the end, our finish in this Power League had no bearing at all in where we would be for Regionals. If we had won the tournament, we would have ended up with 1,510 points... which would have made no difference in our seeded! We still would have been 20th! Hopefully this all makes sense to you!
Our pool consisted of:
Canby Blue
Salem Black
Webfoot Silver (us)
Blues Power
Our first match was against Canby Blue... the team we beat at their tournament for the championship. We knew they wanted revenge, but we also wanted to deny them the pleasure. Game one was kind of ho-hum... nothing particularly good or bad happened, although we dd make quite a few skill mistakes. On top of that, luck was on their side as every random play fell their way. On the flip side, Courtney had a great run of serving, getting 7 opportunities and scoring aces on two of the attempts. Despite that, we lost game 1 25-20. Game two was complete turn around for us as we played much better. Kelli paced us with some great serving, scoring 4 aces which really put them on their heals. I think the tough serving really got into their heads. We took advantage and cruised to a 25-19 win. This set up the critical game 3 (Take note... this will be a theme for us all day!). We started out real strong, again relying on Courtney's great serving. We made the switch at 8-1 and cruised to an easy 15-7 win.
Match two pitted us against Salem Black. This was a very good team that we hadn't seen before. They did a couple of things that we had to adjust to... first, they tipped effectively over the blocks and 2nd, they triple blocked middle attacks. While we have practiced a rotation defense (good for teams that tip), we didn't execute very well and ended up losing 25-23. After stressing the need to play the defense, we did much better in game 2. We also took advantage of the triple blocks in game 2 by hitting right into it. This may seem to be a little counter intuitive, but they weren't quite athletic enough to execute the triple block, so everything we hit against it ended up dropping because they would get a deflection, but never a full block. These two changes, along with our 3rd (4th?) perfect serving game of the season, led us to a 25-18 win. Serving particularly well were Courtney (again!), Laina (2 aces) and Kayla (1 ace) So, on to the 3rd game again. Unfortunately, we started off poorly with our serve receive and never recovered, eventually losing 15-5.
So, now we were 1-1, need a win to get into 1st or 2nd (I thought). Our opponent this time was Blues Power. They were another team that we hadn't seen, but looked pretty comparable to us. Game one was a real tight one, and although we missed 5 serves in game one, we managed to squeak out a 25-23 win. For whatever reason, we didn't show up for game two and lost badly 25-15. So... game 3 again!!!! This game started out the same as the last game 3.... we just couldn't get a side out. Poor passing, mental mistakes and skill mistakes all caught us at the wrong time as we soon found ourselves down 10-1. Then, things changed. All the talking about never giving up started to sink in and we started to score some points. This rattled Blues a bit and they started to make the mistakes. In the end, we outscored them 14-3, taking the game 15-13! An unbelievable comeback!
So we ended up 2-1, usually good for 2nd place. However, everyone was beating everyone else (except Canby), so we ended up in a three-way tie for first. The way they handle ties is they have 2 play-off games to determine seeding. The highest ranked team, gets a bye the first game (assuring 1st or 2nd) while the other teams have to play in in order to get to 1st or 2nd. This arrangement is very frustrating because although you are tied for first, you could end up 8th. So, we were the 3 seed coming in, so we had to play the Blues again. The outcome was different this time as the Blues played very well, and although we didn't play poorly, they just beat us.
So we ended third (grrrr!!!!) after being tied for first. Our next match was against Roseburg Orange. This was a team we lost to at our last Power League, but the girls didn't let that phase them as they took game one 25-22. The we hit the wall...... While played hard, I think all the games we played earlier finally caught up to us and we ended up losing the match 25-22, 15-9.
The last match was again the relatively meaningless game that we never seem to win. The difference this time is that is was against Canby, a team we love to beat. The girls really stepped up and played well... really putting the pressure on them with some great serving. We scored 6 aces (Sky - 2, Sidney - 3, Amanda - 1) and only missed 3, a good ratio. Consequently, we went on to a 25-19 win (it really wasn't even that close).
So, as I said early, our finish really had no bearing on our seeding for Regionals... so while i was disappointed with finishing 7th, I actually was pretty happy with the way we played. We beat everyone we played at least once, which means that we're having longer "good" streaks and shorter "bad" streaks. Our serving was the best of the season, coming in at 89%, just under the magic 90% mark.
While they all had their ...less than stellar moments, the girls really did some outstanding things. Our setters worked real hard all day, chasing down errant passes, getting them up for the hitters. Kayla (I love to dump!) toned the dumping down a bit, which actually made it more effective. Since the teams were not ready for them, they were more successful. One that come to mind was for the game 1 win (25-23) against Blues. Kayla also served 8 aces over the course of the day with her jump floats. Not to be outdone, Molly and Sky both upped their serve percentages from the previous tournament... now if I could only get them to dump!
Our middles were key in our victories. Rachel continues to hit hard and makes athletic plays while Amanada is starting to hit harder and more aggressively. This duo is hard to stop when the get an opportunity to attack. Rachel also went on to post her best serving day of the season, getting 93% in.
Our Libero, Courtney is getting better at determining "in" or "out" and really served the snot out of the ball. She served 35 times and only missed one serve all day. What was particularly outstanding is the she served in streaks. It seems that every time she went to serve, she served at least 4 or 5 in a row. Outstanding!
I left our outside until last because they were really awesome as a group. They all played great, both defensively and offensively. Like Courtney, Laina and Kelli both had great serving streaks that really put the opposing teams on their heals, while Karson had a great solid day... she served well, played defense well and took care of business when she got the opportunity to attack. I feel real confident with putting any one of these girls in any situation. Then there's Sidney. At our last tournament, Sidney really struggled with her serving, getting only 38% of her serves in. I knew Sidney could do much better, but was I was concerned that her confidence might be low. In serving, confidence is one of the most important traits to have... so needless to say, I was concerned. Well, no one told Sidney that she should be unsure of herself as she went out and had a PERFECT serving day! I was so proud of her determination and performance. Great job Sidney!
I talked briefly with the team after our last match (very briefly since we were in the gym from 7:15am to 7:15 pm!) and talked about their never give up attitude and how well they all play together. I am so impressed with the team as they continue to do things no other team has ever done (coming back from 10-1, serving 25 straight points, winning the Canby Invitational, etc). I can only hope that all of you are as proud of them and their efforts as I am. This a special team (no... not special needs) that makes me want to coach forever.
So now on Regionals. We are 20th (out of 117) , which puts us in the middle of the Bronze Division. If we get 1st in our Division, we'll be 17th, if we finish last, 24th. While the season isn't over yet, this is outstanding for this team. When we started the season, I privately hoped that we rank somewhere in the 30's... so ending up 20th is awesome.
I don't have the schedule yet, but I think we'll be a 2 seed in our pool, which means we ref first... probably an 8 o'clock start. I'll let you know as soon as I find out.
Upcoming:
Sidney's Birthday on Wed, April 14th!
Dinner on me for the girls on Wednesday, April 21st! 6:00 pm to 7:30ish. Where - It's a secret for now. Dress nice !!!!!
While the format was the same as all our other Power Leagues, the end result had very little to do with our seeding in Regionals. The reason is that Regionals' seeding is determined by points, not your finish during this tournament. In all Power League tournaments, teams accumulate points based on their finish. For example, we received 495, 495 and 490 points for a total of 1,480 points. The team directly beneath us, Blues Power, had 485, 480 and 505 for a total of 1,470 points. So, although Blues Power finished ahead of us in this tournament (4th vs 7th), we finished higher for Regionals because we had a higher point total. This is also why Canby finished 15th overall (we finished 20th). Although they had finished 8th in EVERY Power League, they had enough point to get into the top 16... because they started out 6th. They had 565, 525 and 485 for a total of 1,575 points. In the end, our finish in this Power League had no bearing at all in where we would be for Regionals. If we had won the tournament, we would have ended up with 1,510 points... which would have made no difference in our seeded! We still would have been 20th! Hopefully this all makes sense to you!
Our pool consisted of:
Canby Blue
Salem Black
Webfoot Silver (us)
Blues Power
Our first match was against Canby Blue... the team we beat at their tournament for the championship. We knew they wanted revenge, but we also wanted to deny them the pleasure. Game one was kind of ho-hum... nothing particularly good or bad happened, although we dd make quite a few skill mistakes. On top of that, luck was on their side as every random play fell their way. On the flip side, Courtney had a great run of serving, getting 7 opportunities and scoring aces on two of the attempts. Despite that, we lost game 1 25-20. Game two was complete turn around for us as we played much better. Kelli paced us with some great serving, scoring 4 aces which really put them on their heals. I think the tough serving really got into their heads. We took advantage and cruised to a 25-19 win. This set up the critical game 3 (Take note... this will be a theme for us all day!). We started out real strong, again relying on Courtney's great serving. We made the switch at 8-1 and cruised to an easy 15-7 win.
Match two pitted us against Salem Black. This was a very good team that we hadn't seen before. They did a couple of things that we had to adjust to... first, they tipped effectively over the blocks and 2nd, they triple blocked middle attacks. While we have practiced a rotation defense (good for teams that tip), we didn't execute very well and ended up losing 25-23. After stressing the need to play the defense, we did much better in game 2. We also took advantage of the triple blocks in game 2 by hitting right into it. This may seem to be a little counter intuitive, but they weren't quite athletic enough to execute the triple block, so everything we hit against it ended up dropping because they would get a deflection, but never a full block. These two changes, along with our 3rd (4th?) perfect serving game of the season, led us to a 25-18 win. Serving particularly well were Courtney (again!), Laina (2 aces) and Kayla (1 ace) So, on to the 3rd game again. Unfortunately, we started off poorly with our serve receive and never recovered, eventually losing 15-5.
So, now we were 1-1, need a win to get into 1st or 2nd (I thought). Our opponent this time was Blues Power. They were another team that we hadn't seen, but looked pretty comparable to us. Game one was a real tight one, and although we missed 5 serves in game one, we managed to squeak out a 25-23 win. For whatever reason, we didn't show up for game two and lost badly 25-15. So... game 3 again!!!! This game started out the same as the last game 3.... we just couldn't get a side out. Poor passing, mental mistakes and skill mistakes all caught us at the wrong time as we soon found ourselves down 10-1. Then, things changed. All the talking about never giving up started to sink in and we started to score some points. This rattled Blues a bit and they started to make the mistakes. In the end, we outscored them 14-3, taking the game 15-13! An unbelievable comeback!
So we ended up 2-1, usually good for 2nd place. However, everyone was beating everyone else (except Canby), so we ended up in a three-way tie for first. The way they handle ties is they have 2 play-off games to determine seeding. The highest ranked team, gets a bye the first game (assuring 1st or 2nd) while the other teams have to play in in order to get to 1st or 2nd. This arrangement is very frustrating because although you are tied for first, you could end up 8th. So, we were the 3 seed coming in, so we had to play the Blues again. The outcome was different this time as the Blues played very well, and although we didn't play poorly, they just beat us.
So we ended third (grrrr!!!!) after being tied for first. Our next match was against Roseburg Orange. This was a team we lost to at our last Power League, but the girls didn't let that phase them as they took game one 25-22. The we hit the wall...... While played hard, I think all the games we played earlier finally caught up to us and we ended up losing the match 25-22, 15-9.
The last match was again the relatively meaningless game that we never seem to win. The difference this time is that is was against Canby, a team we love to beat. The girls really stepped up and played well... really putting the pressure on them with some great serving. We scored 6 aces (Sky - 2, Sidney - 3, Amanda - 1) and only missed 3, a good ratio. Consequently, we went on to a 25-19 win (it really wasn't even that close).
So, as I said early, our finish really had no bearing on our seeding for Regionals... so while i was disappointed with finishing 7th, I actually was pretty happy with the way we played. We beat everyone we played at least once, which means that we're having longer "good" streaks and shorter "bad" streaks. Our serving was the best of the season, coming in at 89%, just under the magic 90% mark.
While they all had their ...less than stellar moments, the girls really did some outstanding things. Our setters worked real hard all day, chasing down errant passes, getting them up for the hitters. Kayla (I love to dump!) toned the dumping down a bit, which actually made it more effective. Since the teams were not ready for them, they were more successful. One that come to mind was for the game 1 win (25-23) against Blues. Kayla also served 8 aces over the course of the day with her jump floats. Not to be outdone, Molly and Sky both upped their serve percentages from the previous tournament... now if I could only get them to dump!
Our middles were key in our victories. Rachel continues to hit hard and makes athletic plays while Amanada is starting to hit harder and more aggressively. This duo is hard to stop when the get an opportunity to attack. Rachel also went on to post her best serving day of the season, getting 93% in.
Our Libero, Courtney is getting better at determining "in" or "out" and really served the snot out of the ball. She served 35 times and only missed one serve all day. What was particularly outstanding is the she served in streaks. It seems that every time she went to serve, she served at least 4 or 5 in a row. Outstanding!
I left our outside until last because they were really awesome as a group. They all played great, both defensively and offensively. Like Courtney, Laina and Kelli both had great serving streaks that really put the opposing teams on their heals, while Karson had a great solid day... she served well, played defense well and took care of business when she got the opportunity to attack. I feel real confident with putting any one of these girls in any situation. Then there's Sidney. At our last tournament, Sidney really struggled with her serving, getting only 38% of her serves in. I knew Sidney could do much better, but was I was concerned that her confidence might be low. In serving, confidence is one of the most important traits to have... so needless to say, I was concerned. Well, no one told Sidney that she should be unsure of herself as she went out and had a PERFECT serving day! I was so proud of her determination and performance. Great job Sidney!
I talked briefly with the team after our last match (very briefly since we were in the gym from 7:15am to 7:15 pm!) and talked about their never give up attitude and how well they all play together. I am so impressed with the team as they continue to do things no other team has ever done (coming back from 10-1, serving 25 straight points, winning the Canby Invitational, etc). I can only hope that all of you are as proud of them and their efforts as I am. This a special team (no... not special needs) that makes me want to coach forever.
So now on Regionals. We are 20th (out of 117) , which puts us in the middle of the Bronze Division. If we get 1st in our Division, we'll be 17th, if we finish last, 24th. While the season isn't over yet, this is outstanding for this team. When we started the season, I privately hoped that we rank somewhere in the 30's... so ending up 20th is awesome.
I don't have the schedule yet, but I think we'll be a 2 seed in our pool, which means we ref first... probably an 8 o'clock start. I'll let you know as soon as I find out.
Upcoming:
Sidney's Birthday on Wed, April 14th!
Dinner on me for the girls on Wednesday, April 21st! 6:00 pm to 7:30ish. Where - It's a secret for now. Dress nice !!!!!
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