Volleyball 10/11

This week is the last week of regular league play for both my volleyball teams. Each of them had matches today and their final matches on thursday. Our post season tournement is this Saturday in Trona.

My 8th grade team played at 3:00 this afternoon. Our starting warmups didn't bode well for the match to come. The whole team was slow. They spent several extra minutes sitting around on the floor while stretching. Their tosses were sloppy, passing was nonexistant. If someone hit a ball off the court everyone just stood there and watched it roll away. No one would move to shag it.

Before the game started I told them that they had to really step up. If they played like they warmed up it was going to be a really short afternoon and they would be going home disappointed again.

Apparently they took those words to heart. They didn't play great, but they did play better than usual. They made several service errors. But only 4 receive errors. Volleying was the best I've seen out of them. They had several rallys where they played three full hits. Their opponents were the first team that we have played this season that really tried to playt multiple hit volleyball. Fortunately my girls have a lot more experience at it than they did. We won the game 25-14.

The second game our opponents stopped trying to play multiple hit volleyball and started just one hitting the ball back over the net. They were also serving better than the first game. The game stayed close but eventually my girls lost it 20-25. However they had one rally in the game where they completed four consecutive 3-hit volleys with two of them ending with spikes. Our opponents one hit the ball back each time. We finally lost that rally on a spike that carried long. It was without a doubt the best rally they have played all season.

So we moved onto a third game to 15. This game showed my players what can happen if you never miss a serve, and pass the ball well on serve receive. My team had only two serve receive errors and no serve errors. They only played one 1-hit rally. Our opponents played everything one hit over the net. My girls eventually won the game 15-10. It was probably the most excited I have seen these girls before. Hopefully they will decide they like that feeling and keep playing the way they did today.

My seventh grade team played a great first game. They made only 4 service errors and 1 serve receive error. Those were the only 5 five points their opponents scored. They won the game 25-5. The highlight of the game was our most inexperienced player, who has struggled just to get serves to the net served four in a row to start the game off.

The second game I rested our regular setters and let two of the 6th graders have a turn. The team made the same number of errors as the first game. But our inexperienced setters made a couple goofs. Eventually they got into a groove and they won the game 25-10. One of my other 6th graders, who up to this point hadn't managed to really connect with a hit, nailed two of them.

We played a practice game with two other players setting. Since it was just a practice game I wasn't really watching the score. I was taking pictures of the team in action.

It was a good day for both teams. I just hope I can keep them playing this way through next Saturday.