Nationals Time

It must be time to go to the Starlings Nationals Volleyball Tournament in San Diego.

How can I tell?

Each year the landscaping in my front yard changes when it is time to go to Nationals.









Now I would never try and implicate the dear sweet young ladies on MY team of such devious behavior. But the culprit of this heinous act actually wrote their names on one of the signs.


So we are off to Nationals today. I will try and post updates over at the Ridgecrest Starlings News Site if I have time.

Ridgecrest Starlings 2009

Wow it has been a busy couple weeks. We had an election, The middle school volleyball season ended. My club volleyball season started. Thanksgiving is only 4 days away.

I have been swamped lately. I hoped to expand my volleyball club out to two teams this year. I had 8 girls last year. This year I had 29 show up for tryouts. We finally split them into three teams. A 16s team, an older 14s team and a young 13s team. The make up of these teams took about 2 weeks and personally cost me several hours of sleep each night, five lbs that I lost worrying about making the right choices, and most hearbreakingly of all, it cost me "my volleyball team". I started this club last year with the belief that a coach should start with a young team. And then when that young team grew up, and moved up in age groups, that coach should move up with them. However because of way too many concerns to try and write about here, I ended up splitting my team from last year onto all three of the teams. My team was not only split apart but I had to give up coaching two thirds of them. Worse yet, the oldest three that I had to give up were the three girls that I have been coaching for the last three years. Putting them on to a different team with a different coach felt a lot like having to give away some of my own children.

Fortunately the girls don't seem to be bothered by this at all. It doesn't seem to bother most of them that they have been split up and that I will not be their coach anymore. So I keep asking myself, if they don't care, why do I? But I do. And regardless of how often I rationalize it, and regardless of how easily my players have moved on - it still hurt to let them go.

But when all was said and done, I'm pretty sure I did the right thing for greatest number of the 29 girls who showed up for my tryouts. When everything was worked out, I am coaching the 14s team. I still have three of my players from last year on my team. It looks like a have a pretty good group of 13 and 14 year olds on the team with them. We have only had a couple practices together but this group is already far advanced over last years team. So I'm starting to get an optimistic excited feeling about this team and can't wait to start practicing with them.

VB in Bakersfield

I took my older middle school volleyball team to Bakersfield on Saturday to compete in the 20th annual Rio Bravo Greeley Middle School Volleyball Tournament. This is always a tough tournament for us. The teams that compete there are mostly all big schools with a large population of students to draw on. So taking a small school team which is usually made up of every girl I can get to play is a challenge.

Lonie, who runs this tournament has been very accommodating throughout the years. We first met Lonie several years ago at a tournament at Garces High School. My team was getting crushed by these larger schools. Lonie and our staff got to talking and she invited us to come compete in her tournament. But she allowed us, to play down a grade from most of the other teams. So unlike most tournaments, if I show up with a team full of 6th and 7th grade players with a couple 8th graders on it, she doesn't make us play in the 8th grade division. So for the last few years we have been playing with our "8th" grade team in the 7th grade division.

I was (and still am) uncomfortable with this. It kind of feels like cheating to me. But the last two years my teams have been eliminated from the tournament during the pool play rounds. But that is not all to blame on the quality of our opponents. Each of the last few years my teams have shown up at the tournament and played the worst volleyball I have ever seen them play. So we were sent home early both years.

This year started out kind of the same. Our first game was ugly. We could not pass a volleyball to save our lives. We lost our first game 23-30. We got most of our 23 points from opponent errors because when we could not handle a serve and when we did get a ball into play our offense was nonexistent.

Our second pool play game was against a weaker team than us. While our passing improved, our serving fell apart. But our offense was working better and we won that game 30-24.

For our third and final game in pool play we had to play one of the toughest teams in the tournament. My team finally showed up. For the first time in four years I got to watch a Saint Ann Volleyball team finally play a game of volleyball like they knew what they were doing. Serves were on, passing was only adequate but our offense was spectacular. I had hitters killing balls from all over the court. Our defense was playing fantastic. We had several long rallys - series of plays where the ball was crossing the net 7, 8 or even 9 times during the rally. In every one of them we were passing-setting and attacking while our opponents quickly settled for just hitting free balls back at us with the first or second hit. We won that game 30-22.

Due to a tie breaker system that I didn't try too hard to question we were placed first in our pool. Last year we were in a three way tie for last in our pool where two of the teams would get to play in the brackets one one would be sent home. All three teams were tied with identical match and game records, and had beaten each other in an A beats B, B beats C and C beats A fashion. I was looking at the points scored and realized that we had the edge in the points scored category over the other two teams. We also had the edge in the points allowed category. But the tournament broke the tie by taking the two teams that had allowed the most points to be scored against them. So we went home while the other two teams played.

This year made up for that. Once again we were in a three way tie with each of the teams having beaten one of the others. We were all 2-1. Unfortunately we were in second place in the points scored category. We were in third place in the points allowed category. And I didn't think that they would break the tie the same way they did last year. So I was prepared to be playing in the consolation bracket instead of the championship bracket. But when the results were posted we were listed as first in our pool and the number two team in the championship bracket.

When I asked the director what the tie breaker was she said head-to-head. Freedom beat El Tejon, and you beat Freedom, so you're number one. I didn't bother pointing out that El-Tejon had beaten us. I figured it was just a little pay back for last year. But I did feel sorry for El Tejon. They were tied for the lead in their pool and had to play in the consolation bracket. Which they won.

Our semi final game in the championship bracket was an inability game. That is a game were we demonstrated our inability to play volleyball. Where our third pool play game had been the best game we had ever played in this tournament. This semi-final game was easily the worst we had ever played. Nothing was working. From the opening serve my girls were playing in panic mode. I took a time out at 0-5 to try and calm them down. No luck. I took my second time out at 3-15, again to try and calm them down. Again no luck. They finally calmed down late in the game when they stopped playing completely. We lost that game 9-30 and three of our points were garbage points when the other team got lazy right at the end.

After a break we were back on the court our last game of the day. The bronze medal match against the previous no. 1 team, which had also lost in their semi-final. We matched up pretty good against this team. We let them have a quick four point lead and then started playing good volleyball while we slowly worked to take that lead away from them. We managed to close the game up to 23-24 when the wheels came off our offense. We were still serving well, passing well and setting well. But our third hits were just not working. We suddenly started spiking into the net and under the net. We were hitting everywhere except over the net and in bounds. Six straight spikes in a row that never even got close to the top of the net and the game was over 23-30.

So we went home in 4th place out of 9 teams. Which is a great improvement over the last two years when we went home without any place at all.

Late in the tournament I had a chance to chat with a couple of the other coaches. When the subject of players ages came up, one of them flat out asked me "I hear you have a couple 8th grade players on your team?" I told her I did. When she asked how many I said three, and one 6th grader. Then I pointed to my girls and said you tell me which three are the 8th graders. They only got one right. Their other two picks were both 7th grade players. They both laughed when I told them that and said "Don't worry about it, Lonie did the right thing letting you play in this division."

All Tournament

I made a quick run out of town today to watch my oldest daughter and her varsity volleyball team compete in the 25th annual Scorpion Volleyball Tournament at Hesperia High School in Hesperia.

Her team did OK in the tournament. There were 10 teams divided into two pools of 5. In pool A the Burroughs team beat Victor Valley Christian 25-22, they beat San Gabriel 25-16, they lost to the host team Hesperia 23-25 and beat Lucerne Valley 25-14 for a second place finish in their pool.

Since the top two teams in each pool played this afternoon in the Championship Bracket. In the first semifinal Burroughs had to face the number one team from pool B - Quartz Hill. This was not a pleasant match for the Burroughs as they lost in straight games 14-25 and 12-25. Quartz Hill had three really good hitters to did a masterful job of hitting around the Burroughs blockers while completely overwhelming the back row defenders.

In the 3rd place match Burroughs faced Victor Valley. After leading most of the game the Burros got themselves to a 22-19 lead and then several of the senior members of the team decided the game was won and dialed in the rest of the game. They lost 23-25. The frustration over this loss carried over into the next game where it pretty much just took over the entire team. They lost the second game 13-25.

The team went home with a fourth place finish out of 10 teams and they got a pretty good look as several teams that they will have to play against when conference play starts in a couple weeks.

For our family the highlight of the day was my daughter being awarded an All Tournament award. This award means that in the opinion of the tournament organizers she was the best volleyball player from Burroughs High School on the court today.

I agree with them completely. Although I think their sophomore outside hitter probably gave my daughter a good run for the money in the voting. But that is just my opinion.

25%

The Burroughs High School Freshman Volleyball Team made their final cuts last night. They started freshman tryouts last week. Since then they made three cuts. One of the six players who played in Middle School for me last year did not make the second cut. This really surprised me. I was sure this player would do really well in High School. Once she got cut, I got really worried. I suddenly realized that if the new coaches at the high school were willing to cut a girl who was probably the best defensive specialist the had in the tryouts, then they would be willing to cut anyone.

Actually there was one girl who is a better defensive specialist than the one they cut. But she is also the best setter at the tryouts. So they probably won't be playing her as a defensive specialist.

When the tryouts started I was sure that all six of my players would make the team. They were, to me, the best six volleyball players at the tryouts. So when one of them got cut, suddenly, I got nervous. This nervousness manifested itself in me not sleeping well, or not at all, for the last week.

So last night I finished with my middle school practice at 7 PM. One of my players was waiting outside for her ride home when I left. Her older sister was one of my players trying out for the freshman team. Since her mother was picking up her sister, then coming for her, I told my assistant coach that she could go and I would wait with my player. I figured this was the quickest way for me to find out how the final cuts went.

So my youngest daughter and I tortured my player while waiting for her ride. Waiting for a ride while I wait with them is usually torture for my players, because I force them to talk to me. I'm not talking about what passes for conversation between many middle school girls and adults. They cannot just respond to my questions with monosyllable grunts. They have to talk to me.

After a few minutes which I am sure to my player felt like several hours her ride pulled into the parking lot. I could see her sister in the back seat but could not see her face clearly. I got up and started to walk towards the car and felt like I was walking with cement blocks on my feet. My thoughts were a massive jumble of what-ifs. What do I say if any of them got cut? What do I say or do depending on which one got cut? What if this? What if that? I was almost physically sick. I had been waiting for two weeks for this news and suddenly I didn't think I really wanted to know what happened. I was trying to decide whether to keep walking towards that car or just turn around and run away.

Then suddenly the back door of the car opened, and the brightest ray of sunshine I have ever seen leapt out with a huge smile on her face and both hands raised in the air and yelled "We all made it."

Suddenly, for the first time in 9 days I felt like I could breathe again. Just that easily all my what-ifs just vanished. I tried to talk to her parents for a few minutes but I am afraid that I may have been babbling. I did manage to gather myself together long enough to make it clear to my ex-player (which is not fully true, she is planning on playing on my club team again this winter. But for the next 10 weeks she has a different coach) that I never for the briefest moment doubted her, nor any of her teammates, ability to to make that freshman team. The only doubts I had were about the new coach's abilities to recognize talented players when they saw them.

So the point to this posting is to brag a little bit on my five girls who will be all wearing BHS green during this upcoming volleyball season.

The title, 25% is a little bragging on the five newest Burros freshmen and my volleyball players who have come before these five. Burroughs High School is the only public high school in this town. Each year the student body averages somewhere around 1700 students. Of those 1700 students, graduates from Saint Ann Middle School make up about 1.8% of the student body.

The three volleyball teams at Burroughs High School are made up of 36 girls. Twelve freshmen, twelve Junior Varsity and twelve varsity. Out of those 36 high school volleyball players 9 of them graduated from Saint Ann School. That is where the 25% title comes from. Our students make up 1.8% of the student body, but 25% of the volleyball team. We have five freshmen, 3 JV players and one Varsity player (my oldest daughter) playing volleyball in high school. The best part of this is hopefully we can up that percentage next year. The oldest of the Saint Ann Players is only a Junior. I only have three 8th grade players this year and I'm sure that one of them will make the freshman team next year. The other two are going to need a lot of work. But we have a year to get them ready. We will have to wait and see.

The hardest thing about all this is trying to get to all the high school games. I have my middle school teams who need to be my first priority. But I now have nine other reasons, who are all very precious to me, to be in the stands cheering on the high school volleyball teams.

It is going to be a very busy volleyball season.

Gender Determination?

Mike of the Mike On Ads blog has created a little tool that will scan your browsers history and try and determine if you are a male or female based on your browsing habits.

So I decided to give it a try. My results were:

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 5%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 95%

This is a great relief to me. I was getting worried. I spend a lot of my free time around tween and teen aged volleyball players. I worry that in some ways these young ladies are starting to effect my brain. I find myself wondering about what they are thinking, what they are feeling and stuff like that. That kind of thinking worries me at times. I'm a guy, and I'm not supposed to be worrying about stuff like that.

So this week I started preparing for the new middle school volleyball season to start next week. I was making some notes to myself about a few things to concentrate on this season.

Note No. 1 - It doesn't matter what they are feeling and thinking as long as they are running laps and suicides while they are thinking and feeling it.

Note No. 2 - If she starts crying, she obviously has too much time on her hands and needs to be doing more push-ups.

Note No. 3 - Nothing fixes a sad or depressed mood like spiking till you puke.

But now that I know that at least my browsing habits verify that I'm still a guy maybe it will be OK if I go ahead and worry about what my players are thinking and feeling during this season. Maybe it will be OK for me to concentrate on making sure my players are having fun and playing like a team instead of just running them into the ground.

Or, maybe I should start just leaving myself notes like:

DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY YOU SISSY!

Starlings National Championship

My volleyball team and I left last Wednesday for the Starlings National Championships in San Diego.

We started our adventure at the opening ceremonies at Sweetwater high school. The place was jamb packed with Starlings Volleyball players, their coaches and parents. There was a parade of banners, a lot of dancing, laughing and just overall good fun by all.





The next morning we started pool play at the Alliant Sports Center. This is a large canvas roofed building that is big enough to hold 12 volleyball courts. Unfortunately this facility is not air conditioned. This became important as the weather in San Diego was unseasonably warm this week. By the time the first round of pool play was half over it was well over 90 degrees in the building and very humid.

Our day started off a little strange. We were on the court warming up waiting for our opponents from Watsonville CA to show up. We were there, a San Diego Navajo team that was going to be refereeing our match was there, and a team from Mission Bay San Diego. But there was no sign of our opponents. So the other two teams sat there and watched us warm up for a few minutes. Eventually we started scrimmaging with the Navajo team because we were all bored. After twenty minutes the tournament official declared our match a forfeit and we recorded our first win of the tournament without even seeing our opponents.

Next up we had to referee the match between the Navajo team and the Mission Bay team. Our Watsonville opponents showed up in the middle of this match. They had all been riding in the same van that got lost on the freeways in San Diego.

Next up we played the Mission Bay Starlings team. We cruised to an easy 25-4 win in the first game on the backs of Laura and her 11 consecutive serves followed by Alyssa fired off 7 of her own including three jump serve aces. The next game we got a little complacent and allowed our opponents to hang around way too long before we finally beat them 25-18.

Unfortunately that complacency carried over to our next match against the San Diego Navajo Starlings team. We let them get a 23-14 lead over us before we finally started to play. With Jazmine serving seven straight serves our team managed to close the game to 21 to 23 before they finally scored their last two points to win the game. The second game we started out like we finished the previous game – hot! We stormed out to a fast lead in the game and held a 23-20 lead when everyone just shut down and stopped moving. Our opponents outscored us five to two in the last couple minutes to win 25-27.

This 2-1 performance was enough to get us a second place finish in our pool. This put us in the division with the top 18 teams of the tournament, which was all the number 1 and number 2 finishers on Thursday.

On Friday we were in a pool with teams from Phoenix Az, Oakland CA and Bakersfield CA. We played at the Balboa Park Activities Center which like Alliant University also didn’t have any air conditioning. It did however have a little better ventilation than Alliant did so to start it seemed a little cooler inside to start. But by the end of the match it was just as hot as Alliant.

Our first match was against the Oakland team. Both teams started a little slow but the Oakland team warmed up a bit quicker than we did. They won the first game 22-25. But once we got going they discovered what kind of team we really were. We won the second game 25-15. In the third and deciding game the team slacked off again and needed six serves including three aces from Rebecca in order to win the game 15-13.

Our second game was against the Phoenix team. There were so far the best team we had faced in the tournament. We started out a little slow and eventually lost the first game 19-25. But the girls got going again in the second game and took an early lead. But we once again slowed down in the end and lost that game 22-25.

The Bakersfield team was our last challenge of the afternoon. We eventually won a slow and error filled first game 25-21. Then sleep walked our way through a crushing 14-25 loss. But the team woke up and really came out serving and hitting in the third and final game. We changed sides of the court with an 8-3 lead and cruised to and easy 15-7 victory. After the match our referee, Ernie, who is the National Starlings ambassador, called the team over and congratulated them on a spectacular performance. He was very impressed with how well out team full of young players held their cool and didn’t get flustered after that big loss in the second game.

Once again we found ourselves with a 2-1 record and a second place finish. And just like yesterday it was enough to keep us in the top division with all the other first and second finishers.

On Saturday we were one of the eight teams that entered the Gold Championship double elimination part of the tournament for a chance to play for the U14 tournament championship.

Our first match of the day was against the Tehachapi U14 team. This team had also played in the Southern California Volleyball Tournament season with us. But we had never played each other. They were always ranked one to two divisions below us in the standings. But they had finished the season strong and didn’t look to be a push over team. I was hopeful when they took the court because they also had two girls who looked like they were no older than the three eleven year olds on our team. However, those younger smaller players never got onto the court for their team, where all three of young players play – a lot.

Unfortunately Saturday was not to be our day. I don’t know if it was the heat, the humidity, the three consecutive days of volleyball, or the fact that my normally tight, best friends, team that has gotten along fantastically all season was suddenly fractured into three distinct factions that were not getting along on or off the court. I have several ideas about what happened to my team but I’m not going to air them here. But their off the court disagreements and bickering carried over onto the court in a huge way this day and brought a very unsatisfying end to our season.

Our match was against Tehachapi who was playing well but not nearly as well as our team was capable of when they were getting along. Unfortunately we were not getting along, we were not moving, and my players were acting like they really didn’t care if they won or lost. And so they lost – 16-25 and 19-25.

Following that match we had to ref a match. It was a very uncomfortable time because I had to down ref for the match and I was very aware of my team that was sitting on the floor behind me keeping score with a lot of glaring going on and no one talking to each other.

This loss moved us down to the loser bracket of the championship division. We had to play a match against a team called Scripps Ranch from the San Diego area. They were also having a bad day. At times they seem to be a fairly good team who was struggling with the heat and humidity. We squeaked out a 25-21 win in the first game and that seem to really deflate our opponents. They pretty much just phoned in their last game of the weekend and we cruised to a 25-12 victory and a chance to keep playing.

We got a three minute break after the match and had to play our next match of the day against the same Phoenix team we had played on Friday. This team was really down. They had been undefeated going into the day and had just lost their first match of the season to an undersized Navajo team from Tuba City AZ. When they walked over to our court they were all shuffling their feet and walking with their head down. They looked like a bunch of whipped puppies.

I tried to rally the team to step up and start playing together like they used to. But it just wasn’t to be. We gave up 6 consecutive serve aces to start the game and that got our opponents fired up. And as fast as they got excited we crashed. We lost the first game 17-25 and the second 15-25.

Our run at our first ever Starling National Championship ended in a two way tie for fifth place. It was not the ending of the season I was hoping for. But overall it wasn’t a bad finish. We started this season as a first time team with first time club players and a first time club coach. The players learned to trust each other, work together and cooperate as a team. In the end we forgot some of the lessons we had learned but we competed in a tournament with Starlings team from all over the country and finished in a tie for 5th place out of 36 teams.

There's a Starling In My Tree

My dear wife ran out this evening to pick our son up from his Boy Scout Meeting. They arrived home around 8:40 and closed the garage door and turned off the exterior lights.

Then about 30 minutes later my dear wife is filling the coffee maker for the morning and she glances out the window and notices something white fluttering in the breeze in the front yard. She looks closer out the window and announces "In the 30 minutes since I got home, someone TPed our house."

So I hauled my tired old carcass out of the chair and wandered over to look out the window. While I was looking out the window, my dear wife had walked over and opened the front door. Sure enough, I looked out the window and there was toilet paper fluttering all around the trees and shrubs in the front yard. As I turned to walk toward the door my wife stepped away from the door and whispered, I think there is still someone out there.

So I grabbed a weapon to defend myself with - my camera, and headed out the door. As I walked down the sidewalk I saw a familiar looking shape scamper around and hide behind the neighbors car. Then I heard the familiar sound of a bird in my tree. Peering closely up into the wind blown branches I discovered a rare sight, there was a Starling was in my tree.



As I snapped this picture the Starling in my tree serenaded me with it's famous call of "Hi Coach!"

Glancing around the yard I quickly found several other Starlings doing what Starling do best - having fun.





Eventually I managed to get a picture of the whole flock together as they plotted their next caper. But then just as fast as they gathered together the whole flock scattered back around my yard.



As the flock of Starlings fluttered around my yard I managed to snap a few more pictures of their handiwork. For a brief moment the adult homeowner in me started thinking about all the cleaning I was going to have to do in the morning. But it is hard to be irritated with Starlings who are leaving "We love you Coach" signs scattered all over your property.





These Starlings, even though they were up to mischief, were being smart. They had left my new car alone. But that all changed when they asked if they could paint the windows on my new car and for some weird unknown reason I told them yes. I'm glad I did because the windshield ended up with this:



If you are not fluent in reading windshield it says:

Starlings Rock, and sometimes we shoulder roll

That's my Starlings, and I wouldn't trade them for all the TP in my trees, the plastic forks and spoons in my grass and the window paint on my glass.

Thank you ladies. I hope you all had fun.

I did.

Getting Back to the Course

I haven't been golfing much lately. I was starting to spend a lot of my time on the golf course last year. I was making a point to get out to the range or the practice green at least two or three times a week. I was getting in at least one full round of golf every two weeks. I was starting to really see some substantial improvement in my game. Sure I was still a 20+ handicap. But I was a low 20s instead of a high 20s.

Then volleyball happened.

Normally the middle school volleyball season would cut into my golfing game and practice a bit, but I still had my weekends free to spend some time at the course. But this year I progressed straight from middle school volleyball to club volleyball. The mai difference was the time involved. Between my daughter's club team that I had to be involved with as a parent and my Starlings Club team where I was the director and coach I was busy every weekend and at least 2-4 weeknights a week. Since volleyball was taking up so much of my time, something else had to give, and that was golf.

(And for the few regular readers that I had here, you will also note that my blogging took a big hit also.)

Now, I do not in any way saying that I regret the time I spend on volleyball the last 8 months. I loved every minute of it. I actually had this week off because it was the end of the school year and I really missed my team. I'm not sure what I am going to do in two more weeks when our season ends for good. I guess I will have to spend some time writing, some time golfing, and some time catching up on my honey-do list.

This morning I ran across an article that has kind of rekindled my desire to get back onto the golf course. A study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet reports:

The death rate amongst golfers is 40 per cent lower than the rest of the population, which equates to an increased life expectancy of five years.

So I guess I have to get back out on the golf course again. At least until the next volleyball season starts. Then my priorities are going to shift again. But this year I may try and make the effort to get in an occasional round of golf during the volleyball season.

Oh, I may try and be a little more consistent writing here also.

Starlings Regionals Tournament

The Ridgecrest Starlings Volleyball Club U14 team completed the Southern California Volleyball Association tournament season last weekend by participating in the SCVA U 14s Regionals Tournament.

The Starlings were seeded 32nd out of 32 teams in the Brass Region. On Saturday the Starlings began their weekend playing on Court A1 at the American Sports Center in Anaheim, CA. During team warm-ups the Ridgecrest Starlings managed to sprain an offhand finger on one of their outside hitters, sprain the right shoulder of a defensive specialist, and one of their starting setters took a solid spike to the face just two minutes before the first match started.

The Ridgecrest Starlings were in a pool with the 1st seed team from the Moreno Beach Volleyball Club, the 16th seed team from the San Gabriel Volleyball Club and the 17th seed team from the SHS Volleyball Club from the San Fernando Valley.

Reeling from the sudden onslaught of injuries the Starlings set out to do something they had not needed to do all season – play hurt. In their opening match against the San Gabriel Volleyball Club the Starlings put on an almost flawless team serving performance, with four members of the team delivering serving streaks of six or more serves. Strong performances by defensive specialists Jazmine Stenger-Smith and Brooke Nelepovitz led their team to a first match victory, 25-14 and 25-14. Nelepovitz valiantly tried to end the second game from the serving line with six consecutive serves that included 3 aces before her injured shoulder gave out and ended her serving opportunities for the weekend.

Next up was the 1st seed in the region from the Moreno Beach Volleyball Club. Maggie Champeny led the charge in this match with over 12 serves and a solid spiking performance proving to her teammates that her injured finger was not going to slow her down that weekend. Unfortunately the Starlings came up short in this match 21-25 and 22-25.

The last match of the day was against the 17th seed team from the SHS Volleyball Club in the San Fernando Valley, which having already beaten both the other teams in this pool was looking ahead to an easy first place finish. The Ridgecrest Starlings rallied behind their team Captains Sammi Anderson and Alyssa Ochoa who combined for an impressive 25 serves. Stifling blocks by Miss Ochoa, Laura Metcalf and Ashley Sherrick drove the Starlings to a loud and exciting 25-19 and 25-20 victory.

The Starlings ended their first day in a three way tie, at 2-1, for first in their pool with the Moreno Valley and SHS teams. The first tie breaker was game record which eliminated the Moreno Valley Team. The Starlings won the second tie breaker over SHS to take the day, and retire to a family BBQ at their motel to celebrate their upset filled day.

Day two of the tournament had the Starlings playing at CSU Dominguez Hills as the new number one seed against another team from the San Gabriel Volleyball Club, a team from the Rancho Santa Margarita Volleyball Club and a team from the Bakersfield Club Jamba team.

Again the Starlings started the day by playing strong against another San Gabriel Volleyball Club team. Highlighting the first game was the serving of Rebecca Dwyer and Ashley Sherrick leading their team to another 25-14 victory. The serving duties in the second game were picked up by Laura Metcalf and Maggie Champeny. While Ashley Sherrick added seven kills for a 25-15 win.

The second match of the day was against the Bakersfield Club Jamba team. This match was the first real let down for the Starlings. They struggled to a 20-25 loss in the first game and completely lost track of themselves in the second game to lose it 9-25.

After a two match break the Starlings were back on the court against the Rancho Santa Margarita team. Powerful serving by Anderson, Metcalf and Champeny and strong front row play from Sherrick and Champeny led the Starlings to 25-15 and 25-20 win.

For the second time in two days the Ridgecrest Starlings found themselves in a three way tie for first at 2-1. However this time the tie-breakers did not go their way and they had to settle for a second place finish. But that was good enough to put the Starlings in the upper bracket of the region’s tournament quarter-finals.

In the afternoon’s quarter-finals bracket the Starlings faced a tall, strong team from the Temecula Volleyball Club in a one game to 25 single elimination match. The Starlings stayed with the Temecula team until the game was tied 9-9 but asking for a fifth upset victory in two days was apparently too much and Temecula slowly pulled away from the Starlings to win the game 25-18.

The Ridgecrest Starlings started the weekend ranked 32 out of 32 teams and returned home to Ridgecrest Sunday evening tied for 5th place in the region. By any standards this weekend’s volleyball tournament was a resounding success for this young team.

This tournament marked the end of the SCVA season. But the Ridgecrest Starlings aren’t finished yet. They have finals, the end of the school year, middle school promotions, the start of summer and only three more weeks to get ready for the Starlings National Championship in San Diego. In a four day event starting on June 19th the Ridgecrest Starlings will compete against some of the best Starlings U14 teams from all over the United States.

Mandatory No. 5

Sorry for not getting this posted earlier. I had to get things prepared for Sports Night at St. Ann School.

Mandatory No. 5 found our Starlings back in Division 12. we had briefly played in division 12 back in Mandatory No. 2. The results then were not pretty. After finishing first in Mandatory 4 we were elevated again to Division 12. I was looking forward to this opportunity. We are a much better team now than we were back in March. However, the teams that are in Division 12 now, were also much better teams than they were a couple months ago.

We played at Gahr High School in Cerritos, CA. Gahr High School is right at the intersection of the 605 and 91 freeways. So we had a ways to travel to get there on Saturday morning. Fortunately we were the number four seed in our pool, so we didn’t have to play or officiate the first match. We arrived at the gym around 8 AM. This means that I missed the coaches meeting so I didn’t get to be lectured for the 8th time this season about not letting my team trash the gym, climb on things that are not meant to be climbed on, or take too long on the court. Remember folks we are there to play volleyball and we are there to play it quickly.

Our first match of the day was against the Cal Jrs 14-C team. This team eventually won our pool. They were a good eye-opening experience for my players. This was really the first team we have ever faced that served like a volleyball game is supposed to be served. Of the 9 players on their roster, six of them could fire hard, serves that cleared the net by only inches. They could also hit those serves where ever they wanted them to go. Their coach watched our team during warm-ups and for the first few minutes of play then she started directing her servers where to serve. They immediately targeted both of the younger players that I had playing in the back row. As a result, my two younger players spent most of this match getting creamed by hard serves.

Of course I had options to try and stop this. I could have called time outs to try and ice the server. But in my experience that seldom works if the server is truly good at what she is doing. Icing a server only works with a weaker server who suddenly finds themselves on a hot streak. Usually taking a time out during a hard service run is done more to allow the receiving team a few moments to collect themselves and to get ready to play again. I also could have subbed those players out of the game. But all that would accomplish is to teach them that I don’t have any faith in their ability to handle a tough situation.

So I kept a close watch on my young players and let them get pounded, as long as they didn’t start losing faith in themselves. Four times on that Saturday I watch these two young players get repeatedly hit with rocket serves and after four or five shanked receive attempts I would finally start to see their shoulders droop or their faces start looking at the floor. Each time I would give them one more receive then I was going to call for a sub and get them out of there before they completely lost faith in themselves. Every time I decided that it was time to pull that struggling player they would manage to pop one of those hard serves back into the air and suddenly we were playing volleyball again.

Yes, we had a hard time handling our opponent’s serves. And yes, we didn’t dominate our opponents with our serves the way we had done in some previous matches. But once the ball was received and in play, we were every bit as good or better team than our opponents were. Our defense was as good as our opponents and our hitting and blocking was better than any of the three teams we faced that day. In all three matches we played, by the middle of the first game our opponents were not hitting, and not blocking and any aggressiveness at the net that they may have shown early in the match was non-existent by the end of the match.

We lost our first match to the Cal Jrs. 18-25 and 15-25. Which isn’t bad playing against a team that had recorded four consecutive division 12, 2nd place finishes in the first four mandatory tournaments. Especially considering that our serves were not working and we were really struggling on serve receives.

Our second match was against a team from the Impact Volleyball Club. This team was having a rough year. They started in Division 8 for Mandatory 1. After 4 straight 4th place finishes they were finally down to division 12. But this does not mean that this was a bad team. They were good enough to have won at least one match in division 8, 10 and 11 on their way to division 12. Again we were facing a team that served a lot better than we were receiving. Again, we were facing a team that was targeting those serves at our younger players.

We managed to get a few more of those hard serves into the air where our offense could go to work. As a team we only committed three service errors and our hitting kept the game close. We were down 23-24 when Sammi crushed a spike right at the back line of their court. Everyone on the court looked at the linesman who was very obviously not paying attention to the game. This clueless 14 year old waffled back and forth between signaling in or out for a few seconds. Then she looked at our opponents and noticed all of them signaling out. So she joined in and signaled out. The referee who’s line of sight was blocked on the play went along with his linesman call. Game over 23-25. After the match three different people who were paying attention told me that the spike was in by at least 6 inches. Oh well. We had given up 24 other points in that game to get us into that situation. But I am getting really tired of coaches who will send players out onto a court to call lines or keep score without making sure that first) their players know what they are doing, and secondly) who will not stick around and keep an eye on their players to make sure they are paying attention.

This close loss seemed to encourage our opponents a bit. They played better in the second game. They definitely served a lot better. I think they realized that their hard serves were their best offensive weapon to use against us. Eventually they won that game 17-25.

Our third match was against the No. 3 seed in our pool, a team from the Stealth Volleyball Club. This team had played the last two tournaments in division 12 after starting the season in division 10. So again they had a lot of experience playing against higher division teams. The only difference was that while they also had great servers, they had the same difficulties receiving hard serves as we did.

During the two games we played against them we had 5 different servers with service runs of more than 5 serves in a row. Once our Starlings figured out that they could match this team serve for serve they got a rush that really pumped up our hitting game. We won both of these games 25-15 and 25-17.

The most entertaining part of this match was watching the referee unload on the Cal Jrs. Coach because of the lousy job her team was doing of keeping score accurately and for missing very obvious line calls. If only he had cracked down earlier in the match a couple of the close games that had been played (with and without us being involved) would have turned out differently. We were not the only team that day to suffer from missed calls by linesmen who were not paying attention.

The final match of the day we had to call lines and score keep for the Cal Jr. vs Impact match. I was very pleased with the job my players did that match. Afterwards the referee congratulated our team on their diligence and attention. He told the team “If more 14s teams would take their officiating responsibilities as seriously as you do, my job would be much easier.” I was also thanked by two other sets of parents from other teams for having players who obviously knew what they were doing and paid attention the entire match. I was very proud of our players.

In the end we were 1-2 in matches, and finished in 3rd place. This was a great 3rd place finish. We faced a couple very good teams who were very good at exploiting our weaknesses. We managed stay in division 12 and in the process prove that we do belong there.

The best compliment I received at the end of the day came from a couple parents from the Stealth team. They loved the way our entire team stayed positive, upbeat and focused during the both the matches we were losing and the match we won.

Mandatory 4

When the schedule came out for Mandatory 4 we were scheduled to play at Citrus College. This was a wonderful location for us. It is one of the closest to home locations that we could draw, and the start time was delayed until 9 AM. Which meant that we would not have to leave town until around 6 AM which is much better than our usual 4-5 AM departure times. But the day after the schedule came out it changed. Suddenly we were scheduled to play at TBD. Man, I really hate playing at TBD, the facilities there are really bad.

Finally on Friday, a third schedule was released and we were scheduled to play at the Home Depot Center in Carson CA at 8 AM. So we were back to a 4:45 departure time in order to get there in time.

We were the number two team in the pool which meant that we didn't play until the second match, but we had to officiate the first match, so at least five of our players had to be at the Home Depot Center by 8 AM.

For those of you who have never played volleyball at the Home Depot Center it is a really unique environment to play in. The Home Depot Center is also known as the Los Angeles Velodrome. The Velodrome is a large indoor wooden bicycle race track. The infield of the track is a large enough space that they can set up 5 volleyball courts in it. Last year the U16s team my daughter was on played a tournament in the Velodrome. I hated it. The parents have to stay off the court. So they sit outside the bicycle track and watch the volleyball games from over 100 feet away. Between the spectators and the courts is a large black net that keeps the balls from flying out onto the bicycle track. However, this year being down on the court as a coach I didn't mind the place so much. There is plenty of room around the courts, it's actually kind of quiet down there. And the roof is really high, there are no overhead obstructions to get in the way. This however did bother a few of our players. They felt like they were playing in a really large fishbowl. Which is actually pretty fitting. The hitters and setters took a little time to adjust to the fact that the roof was so far away.

Our pool for the tournament consisted of teams from Bakersfield, Victorville and Pasadena. So the Arroyo team from Pasadena was the only team that didn't have to deal with a long drive that morning.

In our first match against the Arroyo Volleyball Club Team from Pasadena. Our Starlings started out a little slow, but quickly got organized and got used to the size of the venue we were playing in. They won that first match in two games - (25-18 and 25-15). Following that match we had our only break of the day. Then it was back on the court for a match against the Bakersfield Volleyball Club. The match my players looked a little more like the team I was used to seeing. Which is not a good thing. After winning the first game 25-19 the girls slacked off a little and tried to take it easy for the second game. This led to a 19-25 loss in the second game, and for the first time this season actually started a little bit of barking and snapping at each other on the court. Fortunately they were able to get things together for the third game. We played pretty even until the side change then my front row took over the game and we ran away with a 15-11 victory.

Following that match was our second officiating duty of the day, then our last match.

The final match of the pool was the 2-0, number one seed team from the White Lightening Volleyball Club in Victorville CA against our also 2-0 Ridgecrest Starlings. The way the other matches had worked out this match was for first place. The loser was going to finish in second. Our servers came out of the shoot hot in this match and when we really started spiking the game ended quickly - 25-16. Unfortunately that quick easy win led my still young and relatively inexperienced players to think that they second game would be just as easy. It wasn't. In a back and forth game where our opponents pretty much abandoned their attacking offense in favor of playing defense to counter our attackers both teams stayed close most of the game. Eventually we gained a small lead and held on for a 25-22 victory.

This left us in 1st place and will move us up to division 12 in two weeks. I hope my girls are ready for that. So far this season the only tournament that was not a first or second place finish for us was Mandatory 2, the one and only time we played in division 12.

Highlights for the day were Alyssa serving 36 times with zero errors and Ashley recording 13 aces in just 30 serves. Oh, and the ice cream I had to buy, because they finished first place again. Yeah, I know I guy who is supposed to be teaching them about healthy lifestyle choices buying them ice creams seems a little contradictory. But what the heck, it they keep winning, I'll keep buying ice cream.

Picnic with the Navy

One thing you have to worry about when playing volleyball in the park on a Navy base, is the low flying aircraft.



The best think about playing volleyball in the park on a Navy base is that you never know what is going drive by while you are there.

Mandatory No. 3

At our first tournament of the season I gathered all my players and their parents together and tried to explain to them that when dealing with the SCVA and club volleyball they have to be ready to be flexible and just go with the flow of any changes that happen at tournaments. Just as I finished my little speech one of our parents walked around the corner and announced “They just moved us from court C2 to D3.” Thereby, perfectly emphasizing my point.

Sunday we got to test our ability to relax, go with the flow and be flexible.

Mandatory 3 - 8:00 AM - Fullerton College. Or so we thought.

Since we had an 8 AM start time, and we were the number one seed in our pool, so we had to play at 8:00 we left town at 4:30 AM. This allowed us time to make a quick stop for coffee around 6 AM in Adelanto and still get to Fullerton College right around 7:30. Unfortunately none of us had ever been to Fullerton College before so we were not sure where to park. As a result the four cars we took ended up in four different parking lots. But eventually we all met together outside the gym.

Inside the gym, posted on the wall were the pool play sheets telling us who our opponents were and what court we would be playing on. Next to these sheets was a map showing the layout of the six courts that the 24 teams who were there would be playing on. There was also two gymnasiums that each looked big enough to hold 3 courts each. Standing around were a lot of coaches, a lot of players, and a lot of parents. The only things missing were: Standards, nets, officials, a facility coordinator and, lets see, one other thing…. Oh yeah, my bag of volleyballs.

While no one who was at Fullerton College had any idea where the standards, nets, officials and facility coordinator were at, I knew exactly where my bag of volleyballs was at. It was in the back of my car - in Ridgecrest.

Normally I would have been a little stressed out and embarrassed about forgetting our volleyballs. But since it didn’t look like were had courts to play on anyway I wasn’t too concerned - yet.

While several of us coaches wandered around trying to figure out what we were going to do, a lady named Rose, who I met last year when she was coaching a 16s team, and who had a 14s team this year stepped up and took charge. She started ordering all us coaches to find the standards and nets and get them set up while she started making phone calls.

After a bit we found the nets and standards for one gym. The equipment for the other gym was locked away somewhere. Unfortunately the nets and standards that we found for the one gym were not complete. We did not have a crank for winches on the standards. So I borrowed a volleyball from Rose so my players could start warming up. Then several fathers and I started trying to figure out how to get the nets set up.

Eventually, around 8:20 AM someone from the SCVA showed up and told two of the pools of players that they were supposed to report to the American Sports Center as soon as possible to play there. The rest of us were expected to be there at 1 PM that afternoon. Rose, bless her heart, immediately objected that the pool my team was in should be sent to the American Sports Center immediately because of the distance we had traveled and that she felt it was unfair that we should be kept waiting another 5 or more hours to play when we had already been going for the last 4 hours. The SCVA representative was unswayed. I added that one of the other teams in our pool was from Victorville and had traveled at lest an hour to get there also. Again he was unswayed. So eight of the teams immediately headed for the American Sports Center while the rest of us gathered together to figure out our next move. Since we now had several hours to wait to play volleyball.

Our team parents immediately all voted for breakfast. Since we were all parked in different places we decided to all meet at a Subway parking lot across the street from the College. Once there, we discovered that most of us had little idea what was available in that area. I knew that there were several restaurants on Harbor Blvd. So we loaded up the four cars and decided to head down Harbor Blvd. The lead car, when they saw a restaurant they liked, would pull in and the rest of us would follow them.

Thirty minutes later we were all sitting around tables in the sidewalk patio area of the IHop right outside of Downtown Disney. During breakfast, several of our players were talking about going shopping until our game time that afternoon. But many of the parents, who had been driving at 4:30 AM while everyone else slept were tired and had no desire to shop. While watching our players I noticed that several of them seemed nervous and edgy. So I called my cousin who lived just down the road a bit in Cypress and explained our situation. My cousin and his dear wife decided to hop on their white horses and come riding to our rescue. They invited all 20 of us to come over to their house to hang out for a while.

As we invaded my cousin’s house and back yard the players mostly settled into the game room where some of them were playing Guitar Hero. A couple of others were learning to shoot pool and the rest just sat around and kibitzed what the others were doing. Most of our parents found some space on the couch, in a lawn chair on the patio or crashed across the foot of guest bed for a quick nap.

The decision to invade my relatives castle turned out to be a good one. Our players when we left were much more relaxed and ready to deal with playing some volleyball. Sure they were a little tired, but at least they were calmer and ready to play. Unfortunately when we got to the American Sports Center we had to wait almost 90 minutes before we could get onto a court. Which was just enough time for the girls to hang around passing a volleyball in the parking long enough to get tired and impatient.

Finally we got onto a court and discovered that the one team in our pool that was from Victorville had decided to just go home instead of showing up for the matches. I guess they didn’t have relatives in Cypress who would welcome a volleyball player invasion.

The SCVA says that if we get into a 3 team pool we have to option to play three games to 25 against each team instead of the normal best 2 of 3. the other coaches and I all agreed that we had all been through a long enough day that we were good with just two - best two of three matches.

Our starlings team started off quickly but soon slowed and allowed our opponents to catch back up. We ended up losing the first match 25-27 and 24-26. They were close games that we should have taken but the grind of the day was finally catching up with our girls. Our second match was against the team that had allowed us to borrow their practice balls for our warm-ups before both matches. So I felt a little bad beating them, but not bad enough to not enjoy the victory. Our team was kind of flat for the first game and lost it 17-25. But for the second game our opponents relaxed a little, and I think that relaxing led them quickly into a crash after the long day. Meanwhile our Starlings got their second wind and started to play some volleyball. We won the second game 25-21, then carried that momentum into the third and deciding game where we ran up a quick 8-3 lead. After changing sides of the court, we also slowed down a little but managed to hold for a 15-10 victory. This gave us a second place finish for the day.

But our adventures didn’t end there. On the way home one player and a parent who were traveling in different vehicles started getting sick and had to stop several time to leave their lunch/dinner/breakfast in the California ditches.

I just want to take a moment here to brag about my player’s parents. When they could have gotten angry and started complaining they didn’t instead the helped set up nets. They kept their daughter’s upbeat and focused on why were there. They just waited for me to tell them what was going to happen. When we had to make changes they simply packed up our stuff and players and moved to wherever we had to be. I have heard a lot of coaches and directors complain about the parents they have to deal with. I am pleased to say, I have no idea what these coaches go through. I have great players who in turn have great parents.

Spring Volleyball

Today was the first day of Spring break for most of the students here in Ridgecrest. At least that is what the pubic schools call it. The private schools gave the students the day off for Good Friday. Regardless, the students had the day off and so did I, so we played volleyball.

We were originally scheduled to have practice tonight from 6PM to 8PM. But several of the girls wanted to go to the movies tonight, so I moved practice to 10:30 this morning. We also moved the venue from the indoor gym to the park.



This is one of the few things I like about living here in the desert. It is March 21st. The second day of spring. In certain parts of the United States they are shoveling snow, suffering floods, and just dealing with the wrap up of a long cold winter. Here in Ridgecrest we are playing volleyball in the park, in shorts and tee shirts.



I made the girls run one lap of the park at the beginning of the practice so that we could call it a practice. After that I tried to get out of the way and just let them play volleyball. They played 2 on 2, 3 on 3 and some 4 on 5. I stepped in to even out the sides for a while but was saved when one of the younger girl's older sister showed up and took my place.

It was a beautiful day, warm, no wind and everyone had fun. We all decided we have to do this again soon on a Saturday and make it a family event. Parents, siblings, BBQ, and volleyball. Sounds like fun.

Home From San Diego

On Friday night, my oldest daughter and I drove down to San Diego for a volleyball tournament. We stayed at the Doubletree Golf Resort in Poway which seemed like a nice place, but we were not really there long enough to tell. Dinner that night was at a nearby Claim Jumper Restaurant with two other players and their parents and the coach and his Dad. We had a great time and a wonderful meal. I had the prime rib, medium rare. It was a delicious birthday dinner. My daughter ratted me out to the others that it was my 50th birthday. So they had the waitress bring me a slice of grasshopper ice cream pie with a candle in it. I was so full from dinner that I could only eat a couple bites. But the players at the table took care of the rest of it for me.

Our tournament the next day was held at the Epic Volleyball Club which is a fantastic facility. I got a chance to play there at the Starlings Directors meeting back in December so I was glad my daughter got the chance to play there also.

Her team did really well, they won all three matches and only had to play one three game match. Some of the games were close, but unlike other tournaments they managed to stay focused and finish off their opponents. Best of all in every game they played they looked like they were having fun. That was a really pleasant change for this team.

After the match the whole team went back to the Claim Jumper Restaurant where the coach paid off his bet with his players. The evening before he had promised his players that if they won all three matches that day he would bring them back there and buy them one of the giant mondo supersized six layer chocolate cakes that they serve there. The cake was big enough hollow out and sublet to a couple college students. It was delicious.



Everyone there got a half a slice of cake, and most of us took half of it home with us. I think the coach still had enough cake to take home with him that the girls will all be having some tomorrow after practice.

The drive home from San Diego was definitely a contrast in environments. When we were in the restaurant some of the girls were talking about going down to the beach to play some beach volleyball, but when we walked out of the restaurant it was overcast in the direction of the beach and there was a sharp cold wind blowing. So we decided to wimp out and just head for home.

Ten miles up the road we were driving under blue skies



and enjoying all the wild flowers that were growing along the road sides.



For the next 2 hours I drove in scattered rain showers that varied from a light drizzle to a downpour so loud it woke up my daughter.

Then suddenly the rain turned white.



Then everything along side the roads turned white.



Then in just a hour further up the road we were enjoying a wonderful sunset and driving home under a mostly clear night sky.



Without a drop of rain or a flake of snow to be seen.

Mandatory No. 2

We played in SCVA Mandatory No. 2 on Sunday, March 9, at El Camino College in Torrance CA. We were the number four seed in our pool and therefore didn't have to play in the first match. So we left Ridgecrest at 5 AM that morning. With only one brief stop in Mojave on the way down we arrived at the college just after 7:30. This was a pretty pleasant trip, nice roads, not much traffic and other than some fog once we got into the LA area the weather was clear.

Going into this tournament I had been harping on our players to concentrate on the volleyball games and not spend so much time worrying or wondering about any extra-curricular activities that may have been planned for the day.

Unfortunately they didn't come to this tournament any more focused than before. I don't know if it is just their age, or what, but most of this team still thinks that club volleyball is supposed to be a social event. Meaning that you don't do anything without standing around for a half an hour talking about it first. Prime example was trying to get the girls out side the gym to warm up once we all got there. I called out to them and said "Ladies, lets go" and motioned for them to follow me. Then I walked outside, where I had to wait until they all eventually wandered out the door. Once outside they immediately circled up and started talking again. I got a couple of their attention and motioned for them to keep following me. Then I walked around the corner to the area I had selected for our warm-ups. Then I waited there for a couple minutes with about half the team wondering where the rest of them are. Finally I started the few girls that were there warming up and just added the rest of them into the group as they eventually strolled (while chatting together) over to where we were.

Our first match of the day was against a Bakersfield Club Jamba team. Watching the other teams in our pool warm up and play I had already decided that this was going to be our tough opponent of the day. Then half way through our first game I was starting to re-evaluate my decision. Our Starlings team started that game playing like a team who has finally come to a tournament to win. We were serving well, everyone was moving, and talking. Our passing was spot on and hit were dropping in also. We very quickly ran up a 20-13 lead over this team. Then just as fast as we started in this game, we stopped. We stopped serving, passing, moving, talking and spiking. Suddenly my volleyball team turned into 6 spectators to a very one sided volleyball game. We lost the game 23-25.

For the second game I tried to get my shell shocked team back into focus and playing again. But it was not to be. The second game was a complete repeat of the end of the first game. Except for serving. We did serve well that game. But since we were not rallying the serves didn't do us much good. We lost the second game 12-25.
Our next match was against a Beach Cities Volleyball Club team. We started out slow and static again, but fueled by a couple good service runs we managed to make the game close. Too close. We took a slight lead at 23-22 but then started reverting to our old slow ways. Several of my players seemed to sense that victory was in our grasp and really tried to keep the team moving. But we just couldn't put this team away. Eventually after several lead changes we lost this game 29-31. The longest game this team has played so far in their short history.

My players seemed to take this close loss personally and really roared onto the court in the second game. This game looked a lot like our first game. We started out playing like we were invincible. Then once we got a big lead we slammed on the brakes, stopped moving and let our opponents scramble back into the game. However, unlike the first game, this one we managed to end before our opponents mounted a full comeback. We squeaked out close 25-21 victory for our first win of the day. Unfortunately it was also our last.

The third and deciding game of the match was never close. We changed sides of the court when our opponents were up 8-2, we went on a mini run of points right after the side change, but eventually lost the game and the match 8-15.

After a one match break, we stepped onto the court to play what I thought was the weakest team in our pool. This team, called TCA, had beaten the Beach cities team, but and been manhandled by the Bakersfield team. We spotted them a 7 point lead to start the game, then actually started playing some volleyball. Unfortunately we were playing trade points volleyball. Finally down 19-12, one of my 7th grade players woke up and decided to start playing, from the service line. Using a wonderful mix on top spin and floater serves she fired off seven service aces to tie the game up. But once they finally managed to return one of her serves we were through. We lost the game 22-25.

That loss seemed to just end the day for my players. They stood in the huddle before the next game and were saying all the things you would want to hear them say. Unfortunately it was all just talk. Because once the game started there was only talk, no action. I used one time out early and struggled to find some new words to explain to them that they were not moving at all, and that just standing in place and reaching for balls that came near them was not going to work. But like the rest of the day they were either, not listening, not hearing, or just not caring. The continued to play their own special style of stand around volleyball until the game was over 11-25.

This one game win, 0-3 match record day was the worst day for us as a volleyball team. Unfortunately the blame for today must rest firmly on my shoulders. I obviously have not been getting through to these girls. So I am in the process of revamping my training schedule, and my practice plans. What we are doing is not working, so I have to try and find something that will. I have until 6 PM Tuesday night to do so. Wish me luck....

Las Vegas Invitational

My oldest daughter and I got home from Las Vegas last night around 5:20 PM. We were both tired, and we think she is getting sick.

This morning (I had planned on taking today off work) she is still in bed - sick.

We left for the Las Vegas Invitational Tournament Friday morning around 10 AM. We picked up our three passengers (a parent and two other players). Then we hit the Trona Rd. heading for Las Vegas. Since it was a holiday weekend I had no intention of getting anywhere near I15. The last thing I wanted to deal with this weekend was a highway full of idiots from Los Angeles all trying to get to, or home from, Las Vegas as fast as they could. So we went through Death Valley to get there. The drive wasn't too bad. The road is a little rough in spots, but the lack of traffic sure make up for that. Sure it took a full four hours to get there. But I'll trade that extra 30 minutes on the road for only seeing 50 cars on the highway over a 200 mile stretch any day.

We got to Vegas and got checked into our Casino around 3 PM. We were staying at Arizona Charlies Casino on Decatur Blvd. It is an older place that isn't kid or health friendly. Meaning the entire casino, hotel and restaurants reek of cigarette smoke. Even the non-smoking rooms smell bad. Because even on the floors full of non-smoking rooms, people walk around the hallways smoking. So we took 9 young athletes to a three day volleyball tournament and dumped them into a smoke filled environment surrounded by sex and gambling for the weekend. Next year my daughter and I don't care where the team is staying. We will be booking a room in a motel, not a casino. We were there for the volleyball tournament, not the casino atmosphere. We're not sure why the director was there.

Friday night I was signed up to work the Unsigned Seniors Showcase. This is a two hour volleyball practice where unsigned seniors can show off their talents for all the college recruiters that were there for the tournament. I spend the first half hour serving at girls. This was exhausting. I have served for 10 or 1 minutes at a time, but never for 30 minutes. I did get a chance for a break after 20 minutes, but it only lasted 1 minuted before the coach on the other side of the court needed me to spell him. So it was back to serving again. After serving I had to toss balls to hitter for the next 40 minutes. This wasn't nearly as tiring as the serving. Actually I really had fun. After spending so much time on the court with 14s players, it was really different tossing balls for girls who really know how to hit.

The second session was full of setters. We ran a coach on three drill for about 30 minutes, I started out warming the players up for about 10 minutes, then this (much) younger coach took over and really ran them through their paces while I just shagged and feed balls for her. The second half of that session they moved our setters onto a court with several middles and two other coaches. So the three of us who had been working the setters didn't have much to do. Mostly I spent the last half hour shagging balls, and keeping people from wandering onto the courts. The showcase was fun, and I will probably volunteer to help out again next year. After all, I got a polo shirt and a $10 Subway gift card out of the deal. OK, so the pay wasn't great, but it did give me a chance to maybe help some young player get a chance to play volleyball in college. That made it worth while.

On Saturday we played in the top pool of the tournament at the Cashman Center on Las Vegas Blvd. Our pool consisted of the number one seed team in the tournament, 801 from Utah. Also the numbers 78 and 79 teams from Central Ohio and Colorado Springs, CO. Yes, we were the 156 (last place) seeded team in the tournament. Our team managed to put a scare into the team from Colorado Springs, losing the second game to them 24-26. The rest of the day was pretty much our girls getting whacked. Our second best game of the day was a 16-25 loss to the number one seeded team.

Since we had the afternoon off, and all of Sunday morning off, we took the team to the Tournament of Kings Show at the Excalibur. This dinner show was a lot of fun. It is a lot more theatrical than the Medieval Times dinner show down in La Palma. I prefer the Medieval Times show because there is a lot more horsemanship, combat skills and fighting. This show had a lot of pageantry and showmanship to it. But it was still entertaining. After dinner we decided to walk the strip with the girls for a while. Unfortunately this adventure got a bit out of hand and we ended up walking about a mile farther than most of the girls and parents wanted to walk. So by the time we got the players back to the Casino, they were all exhausted.

The next morning, no one else would get up in the morning with us, so my daughter and I rolled out of bed around 9 AM, we had breakfast at the IHop down the street, then did some shopping. We hit a couple shoe stores, and the Meadows Mall.

That afternoon our team was playing much better. We still didn't win any matches. But we did managed to take the first two teams we played to three games. Our third match was against our old friends from the Tehachapi Starlings team. This team and ours usually match up pretty well. The girls all get along and we have had a friendly rivalry going steadily since the beginning of last year. Unfortunately they were ready for us in that match and we provided them with the only two games, and the one match they won all weekend.

This last place finish in the second day of pool competition put us into flight 5a for the Monday competition. Monday was a single elimination bracket with 6 other teams. Unfortunately we showed up half asleep, with half the team starting to get sick, and we lost our first match of the day - 19-25, 15-25. So we had to hang around and keep score for the next match then we headed for home. We stopped by an A&W for lunch before leaving Las Vegas, again, to travel home through Death Valley. I was only about 10 minutes down the road when all three girls fell asleep. They only woke up as we reached potential bathroom stops when we asked if they needed to stop. They didn't, so we just shot straight on through to home.

By the time I went to bed last night the final results of the tournament were posted online. We started the tournament seeded in last place. We finished the tournament tied for last place with 6 other teams. When all was said and done, we were on of 8 teams in the tournament who did not win any matches. But, of those eight teams at least we were not one of the three who also did not win any games.

I think the tournament was fun. My daughter came home sick, tired and sick and tired of losing. The team had some troubles this tournament, but they also had some bright spots. I just hope that each of them learned something.

Qualifier Number 3

We played Qualifier No. 3 at the American Sports Center in Anaheim CA at 3:00 PM Saturday. At least that was the plan. We arrived at the ASC around 2:15 and discovered that the morning sessions were still in progress. We couldn’t find an empty court to warm-up on so we took over the hallway in the back of the building near where the basketball standards are stored. It was kind of crowded but it gave the girls a place to pass and set for a while. We were supposed to start at 3 on courts B3 and B4 but at 3:00 the teams on those courts were just starting the second game of their last matches.

Eventually a court opened up over on the D row and hustled the girls over there to start warming up. We were about 10 minutes into a warm up and some guy and a referee come over to me and ask “Ridgecrest Starlings?” When I yes he says “You are up on court C3, right now.” Then the referee looks at me and says “I need your captains.” and walks away.

Well my girls were all on the court with me, but all their bags and my stuff, including lineup sheets in my briefcase were over in the corner with our parents. I sent one of the girls’ friends running to get their parents and our stuff while we moved over to court C3.

When we got there we found out that one of the teams in our foursome hadn’t showed up, but we were continuing on without them. So as our parents settled in to watch my girls got onto the court and ready to play. I was a little apprehensive because of how fast things were happening. I have tried to get my team into a mindset where they can play under any circumstances, even when rushed and hurried. I was very proud that they handled the situation very well.

Our first game was against Revolution 14-1, a team from the Lancaster/Palmdale area. Their coach had approached me earlier and asked if all my players had made it, since he was still waiting for two of his. Apparently they did get there before we were supposed to start playing.

My girls muffed the first couple serves to give the Revolution team a slight lead. But that is it for that game. We rolled to a pretty convincing 25-13 win. My players were serving a lot better than last week, and playing defense well. We didn’t get a chance to run much offense. Most of our points came off service aces, service errors by our opponents, or illegal rotations by our opponents. The Revolution team was running the same complex player rotation and serve receive rotation that our local high school team runs. Personally I think they were crazy, the rotation was way to complex for younger girls, but more importantly the game they play at this age doesn’t require it. It is a serve receive for older bigger serves and a game that is played a lot faster than the one we play. In the case of our match those younger player’s inability to maintain or control their overlap cost them 10 points in the first game and 7 or 8 in the second.

The second game was a game of experimentation for my team. I managed to get three of my girls to give their jump serves a try. One of them struggled with it a bit but the other two were doing well. They all three jump serve well in practice but are all afraid to do it in games. Hopefully the success they had will encourage them to use it more often. We won the second game 25-15.

Our second match was against a team from Palm Springs called Club Mojave. This team looked to be a stronger team than our first opponent. But they had a really hard time receiving our serves. We committed four serve errors that game, and won the game 25-5. In the second game our opponents got them selves collected and started playing some volleyball. At one point they had a 13-9 lead on us. But some solid serving (no jumps) and some good offensive plays finally led us to a 25-19 victory.

With the missing team never showing up we recorded a couple forfeits. So our record for the day was 3-0 in matches, 6-0 in games for a first place finish in our bracket. That finish should put us in the division 13 when the mandatory tournaments start next month.

Qualifier Number 2

My 14s volleyball team played in our second tournament on Saturday. We left town at 4:30 in the morning. Drove down to the American Sports Center in Anaheim CA in time for the start of the tournament at 8:00 AM.

We were the number 4 seed in out bracket so we did not have to play the first match. We were scheduled to play in the second, third and fifth matches. We had officiating duty in the sixth match.

Our first game was against a team called Impact 14. We struggled in the first game, but managed to stay close. We lost that game 22-25. But I was hopeful. I hadn't seen that team do anything we couldn't counter, handle or out play. In the second game my girls seemed intent on proving me right. We jumped out to a small lead and were cruising right long until the game got to 21-18. Then the other team rotated a really good server to the line. This rotation coincided with my girls going just a little flat. They were down for just a couple minutes. But it was enough. I used my timeouts, and one substitution. But that didn't stop our opponents from stealing a 23-25 win from us. This Impact Team ended up finishing the day an undefeated 3-0.

Our next match was against a team from the Channel Island Volleyball Club. They had lost a close match against our third opponent of the day in the opening match of the day. We played OK but just couldn't seem to get out offense working. We lost the first game 16-25. This loss seemed to wake up my players a bit. We won the second game 25-16, and cruised through the third 15-5.

Our third match was against Conejo Crush 13s team. We probably matched up pretty well with this team as only 3 of my 8 players are too old to play 13s. For a group of 13s this team played really well. We won the first game 25-18. The second game was a different game. We just could not pull away from this team. They matched up point for point or short run for short run. We held our short lead most of the game but eventually fell behind 23-24. Then my worst fear happened. My star player rotated into the service spot. Normally this would be a good thing. But while she was setting and hitting well that day, and playing great defense, her serving was a nightmare. On the day this player, who has been a star of my middle school teams for 3 years, couldn't serve her way out of a wet paper bag. She was hitting 20% from the service line. Twice I had warned her that if she didn't get her act together I was going to make her start jump serving. Just so that she would have an excuse for missing. (btw, she has a very nice jump serve, that she is scared to us in games).

Well, this star player comes to the line, her team down one point, her opponents needing only one point to end the game, and she calmly and smoothly serves three straight service aces. I told her that I would consider that performance as redemption for the rest of the day, but I would still spend some time examining the game video to see if her serving problems in the last two tournaments was a technique or a mental problem. I'm really hoping its technique, I can fix that a lot easier than I can fix a mental one.

So we finished the day in second place in our bracket. I hope that is good enough to get us moved into the bronze bracket next Saturday. If not we will just have to play our way up during the mandatories which start on March 1st.

The only glitch in our day was some of the parents that came with us had some real trouble with the score keeping that was being done. They tended to get a little vocal when the teams score-keeping would make mistakes. Which happened a lot. I was shocked to see how little effort some of these other coach's put into the score-keeping process. Each team had to score-keep one match each day. Many of these coaches just dump a couple girls who may or most likely don't know how to keep score. Then they disappear. So we have girls who don't know what they are doing, or more likely just are not paying attention handling the scores for their opponents. In each of our games we had at least one stoppage of play in order for the referee to straighten out the score-keeping.

When the score-keepers would mess up the flip chart my parents in the stands would start yelling and pointing that the score was messed up. They were taking this personal because the mistakes were constantly being made against us. The referee we had was trying to be reasonable, but he was not going to allow anyone to yell at the score-keepers, even if they were messing up - a lot!

In the end, after we had finished our turn as scorekeepers the referee apologized to me and our parents for threatening to throw them out of the gym. He noticed the attention my girls paid to the score-keeping process, the lines and the paperwork. He saw that I stood there with my girls the whole time checking their work and helping them were needed. He also noticed that the two games we were score-keeping were the only games he refereed all day that he didn't have to stop the game to straighten out the score-keeping. He told me "If that is level of maturity and careful attention your parents have some to expect from volleyball players I can understand why they got so frustrated with the sloppy work from the other teams."

It made me feel good about my girls, and really disgusted with the half-assed job most of the other 14s coaches seem to be doing teaching their players about their off the court duties.

We got home about 6 PM Saturday night. Three of my players had a special engagement that evening. Our School was holding a major fund raising event that evening. The 20th Annual Saint Ann's School Car Raffle. The three players were supposed to show up dressed nicely and work as the "Vannas" for the night. Named after Vanna White their job is to take the ticket numbers as they are drawn off one board and move them over to another board. These three young athletes were radiant in their nice dresses and too high a heels. I was proud that none of them feel off their heels, off the stage, or asleep on the job. It was a long day for them and they did a wonderful job.

Our next tournament is next Saturday. But before then we have two practices and a lot to work on. I can hardly wait.