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!