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