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!!!!!