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!