Volleyball – Game 4

The battle of the unbeatens. We were 3-0 going into tonight’s match and so were our opponents. Several ladies on my team had heard from friends on other teams that this was supposed to be a tough team. So my team was a little nervous. I tried to tell them that the teams that are telling you this team is tough are also teams you have beaten. We're a tough team also. They didn’t listen.

We lost the first game 21 – 25 and the second game 19 – 25. We could have beaten this team. They were good, but not that much better than us. If my team would have served this week as well as they did last week this match would have been a much closer affair.

I expanded my statistics taking tonight to also keeping track of what I started thinking of as sloppy hits. I started noting it as s-hits but decided that I couldn’t start thinking of it that way or sooner or later I would say it or write it in front of one of the ladies on the team – Bad Coach – Bad Coach. So s-hits have been changed to BFPs (Bad Form Passes).

A BFP is any pass where the player swings their arms from the side with no effort to get their body in line with the ball. Standing with your feet planted in place bending over at the waist and reaching for the ball is also BFP. Finally the last type of BFP I noticed my team making a lot is trying a power shot. Here they move into position in front of the ball, then bend over at the waist, and then swing their arms so their hands start down between their ankles and swing upwards until they contact the ball. This pass seems to be intended to drive the ball into the next county. What it usually accomplishes is hitting the ball into the net, out of bounds or up into the rafters of the building.

I’m not going to keep track of which player commits the BFP. I don’t have an assistant coach and keeping track of this much information and the game is about all I can handle.

Also I'm able to keep track of missed first serves (MFS) without any extra bookkeeping.

The stats for this weeks game pretty much show why we lost.

Player   7 April    14 April 
M        3/5        5/5 
A        9/10       13/13
K        7/7        4/6
B        12/12      2/5
J        2/4        7/9
S1       8/8        0/3
K        4/4        dnp
D        3/3        3/6
S2       4/5        dnp
 
Total    52/58      35/47 
 
MFS      4          8
SAWIB    10         6
BFP                 29 

We only missed 6 serves last week and missed 12 this week. Additionally we served 11 less times than last week. I suspect that the total number of serves was off because of the larger number of missed first serves.

On the bright side we had 4 less instances of everyone standing around watching it bounce.

So I guess next Monday’s practice is back to basics. Serving and passing!