Top 8

The 303 Volleyball club was back at it at 8 this morning. Which meant getting up at 5:30 again for Kendall and I, driving halfway downtown and then taking the light rail the rest of the way. It was a fairly quick trip, but still an hour for us to arrive at the Convention Center to close out the Colorado Crossroads tournament for us.

We’d played well, 3-1 both days to stay high in rankings, and then an exciting, though not overly challenging win late Sunday to make the Gold bracket for our division. The first game this morning had us matched up with the Colorado Juniors, a team that beat us in Jan in the first tournament, but who we beat soundly in one of the ranking tournaments after that during Feb. We thought we were better, but you never know.

We started out well, going up by 7 or 8 and it looked like we were blowing them out. Clicking on all cylinders, girls making strong, but safe decisions, jumping and working hard. The Juniors came back, and got to within 2, but we went ahead to win 25-19. The second game was worse, with them staying 1, 2, 3 ahead. We’d get within one or tie and then make a silly mistake. A long serve, a push into the net, an (unnecessarily, IMHO) hard hit. We lost 25-22. The third match was tight. We got to 8 first, but from there we traded points.

9-9

10-10

11-11

13-13 and we made a nice play to get up 14-13. I thought we might win it, but we had a play stopped when the ref called 4 hits. However the second ref overruled, saying the Juniors had touched it. It didn’t matter as they won the point and tied at 14.

15-15 and then we got two plays to win the match and move on. We were in the top 8, and after a break, played a Nebraska team that had beaten us Sunday. They beat us again, easily. Lots of mistakes on our part, and we made the first game close, but we were really blown out during both games for most of the time. Tournament ended, and we’ll be ranked somewhere in the 9-16 range. The rankings show us as 5th, I guess tied with the other teams that lost in the second round.  I watched some of the next game for the team that beat us and they played a big, tall, fast, hard hitting team from AZ that I don’t think we’d have had much of a chance against.

Kendall didn’t play at all today, but she did work hard in warmups and looked better. We tried to keep her spirits up this weekend, telling her to support the team and continue to work. We think the coach wants her to be more aggressive, even if she makes mistakes. I know that can be hard, because I struggle with it. And when I play and hit it out, I feel bad, making me want to make a safer play next time.

We’ll see, and keep working. The coach did say she had improved as we were leaving and she’s looking closer to the other girls, so we’ll keep working.