Volleyball 9/29

This afternoon was a busy volleyball day. Both the 7th and 8th grade had a matches at 3:00. Then in order to help out Immanual Christain School we moved my seventh grade game against them that was scheduled for next monday to 4:30 today.

The 8th grade game was extremely disappointing. They started out the first game standing around like statues. The one or two girls who do move, do so uncontrollably and usually mishit the ball when they get to it. But the first game today seemed to spectacularly bad. The only bright spot of the game was serving. They only made two serve errors. However, they committed 13 serve receive errors. I have tried to emphasize their better volleying abilities this last week. If they get the serve in the air they have been volleying better. But today they forgot how to do that also. They lost the first game 14-25.

The second game was better. They only made 5 serve receive errors but did make 6 service errors. Volleying was still way off. They did win the second game 21-15. But it wasn't a pretty win.

The third game went from bad to worse. More serve receive errors and non existant volleying. They did hit a couple servers and eventually lost 10-15.

I do have a couple things we really need to work on next tuesday. I have worked for three years to get these girls to call the ball before they play it. this year they are finally starting to do that. But this last week they have started calling balls and then not hitting them. They are also still getting in the setter's way. I have setters running across the front of the court yelling "Mine" and at the last second the hitter who should be getting ready to spike the ball is stepping in front of the setter and playing the ball instead.

The other real problem that has plaqued this team is trying to get them to call balls near the line as "In" or "Out" in order to help out thier teammates. This season they have been doing a lot better at doing that. Unfortunately they have gotten better than 75% of those calls wrong. I really don't want them to stop calling the line balls. But I want them to improve their accuracy. I have a few drills for them to work on next week that might help that. I hope.

Since we had two games at the same time my assistant coach handled the 7th grade game. She wasn't comfortable keeping stats and trying to watch the game. So all I know is that they swept 3 games. Since they finished early I suspect that the scores were not close.

My 7th grade team had a double header. So we had to wait 45 minutes for our next match. We had the advantage of being able to watch our opponents play in the match we had to watch. I told my girls to watch the match. Watch the opponents and figure out which one of them they would want to serve to when their match rolled around. I had 2 sixth graders paying attention and 2 of the 7th graders. At least the others sat and visited quitely.

Once our match started it was obvious that the four girls who were paying attention were really paying attention. All four of them had good service runs everytime they got to serve. The first game was a little sloppy. They took a few minutes to get themselves organized and moving. But once they settled down they started running service aces and even got in a couple pass-set-spike combinations. They won the first game 25-14.

The second game I bowed to pressure from some of my 6th graders. They have been asking for more opportunities to try setting. So I told them if they won the first game easily I would trade off setters for the second game.

Apparently this agreed with them. The won the second game 25-6. They committed 2 service errors, and one serve receive error. Two of the other three points they gave up were from misshit spikes that followed pretty good sets. They final point was from a three hit volley that didn't land in bounds.

It was a great game. Total domination. Unfortunately I noticed that as the game progressed they started getting a little sloppy and lazy. I will need to work on that with them on tuesday.

I also owe a couple more 6th graders a chance to set. Our opponents didn't want to play a third game so the two girls who I told would get to set that game didn't get a chance.