Thirteen and One

So I am a little behind on my posting and we have played a few games since I wrote about the last one. I will try to keep each of these short and give you the gist of what has happened.

Unfortunately I have to start off the first of these three blogs talking about a loss. Yes, it’s true we did lose and I think it shook us up a little bit.
We traveled to Mannheim to play in the biggest game of the season for us. Had we won this game we would have had one more victory to clinch the league and get every Monday off for the rest of the season. We had a minor setback the week before the game as our starting setter tore a ligament in her thumb and would be out for the rest of the season. That meant that our 17 year old back up setter had now become our starting setter, and it would be the first match that she had ever started. You could see a bit of nerves in everyone and that we were anxious to get the game started and go for victory 14.

Game 1 started off well, a little shaky but we were able to get into a groove passing relatively well and Ramona was getting good comfortable setting to the outside but our powers weren’t able to put the ball away as often as normal. This lead for the game to be closer than it needed to be but we eventually pulled out the win 25-21 in 24 or so minutes!

Game 2 was a different story as we couldn’t pass to save our lives and we were very lucky to even be in the match early on. One rotation killed us and Mannheim was able to pull away a bit. We had some huge plays late in the game but we were never able to have the final push to overtake them. The game finished on a Mannheim ace, score was 26-24, and we seemed a little dejected, we needed to rebound for game three!

Rebound is what we did in game 3. We came out all guns firing and were digging more balls and finally putting some serving runs together. We had two early serving runs and ran away with the game. They had used both time outs by the time we had reached 12 points. The connection between Ramona and the hitters was much better largely because our passing was much better. The final score was 25-16 and I was feeling confident going into the 4th game!

That confidence was quickly shattered as we got aced on the first few points and passing never recovered after that. We made it very tough on Ramona for setting and it showed when she was called for ball handling 3 times in 8 or so plays. This game was a lost cause and we just needed to build some momentum going into the 5th set. The final score was 16-25 for Mannheim although it could have been much worse had we not made a push at the end.

Game 5 was tough. We were neck and neck until the change at 8 and then one rotation killed us again. It was setter in position one and we were actually passing well for once but we weren’t putting the balls away. Ramona was trying her best to distribute the ball but she always seemed to be setting into a double block which is never fun for a hitter. Eventually out of system I was able to get a kill and we were finally out of that rotation. But a missed serve and traded side outs lead to me on the service line with Mannheim on match point. I made a good serve but their opposite got the game winning kill off our floating middle blockers hands. It was all over 15-12 for Mannheim, our first loss of the season. It will make it a little tougher to clinch the league and we have to practice every Monday so that was sad too. So now we have to win 3 more matches in order to clinch the league or win 2 more and hope that Mannheim loses to Sinsheim in two weeks. Either way we need to win and go up!!