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