Round Five

I know I've been bad about writing the last week and quite frankly, I haven't been wanting to talk about our last match at all so I'll just go over it briefly.

Any one who knows me even a little bit knows that there's very few things I hate more than losing (Jersey Shore and Brett Favre, for instance). Whether it's a game of soccer on Xbox or a round of golf or a national championship match, nothing gets me more furious than losing at anything. What makes it even worse is when I know my team has the ability to win and doesn't. And even beyond that is when we don't even give ourselves the opportunity to win.

Last Sunday was one of the longest days of my life. Woke up in Tierp a little before 6 AM (again, those who know me also know I am far from a morning person), hopped in the trusty Tierp Volley van and drove about six hours to Falkenberg, a town all the way down on the west coast, got our asses kicked, and hopped back in the van for the six hour trip home. All in all, 12+ hours of driving, 61 minutes of volleyball.

When I say we got our asses kicked, I mean we got absolutely destroyed in every facet of the game. Our passing was by far the worst we have had in any match, scrimmage, practice, you name it all, all year. This, of course, prevented us from executing the main part of our game plan, setting our middles. Once their serves had us off the net, we really stood no chance. Falkenberg is a big team with very good blocking middles and basically one big gun, their opposite. We really couldn't do anything right the entire match. Passing was terrible, hitting was pretty horrific and we couldn't even seem to get a serve in. Sixty-one minutes, including a ten minute break, was all it took to send us packing. Embarrassing to say the least, especially in front of about 1,000 people. Kyle and I led the way with eight points each, not a big number by any stretch.

Moving on, our practices have been promising this week and we are returning home next weekend where we have played our best ball by far this year. Also, we are hoping for a big, enthusiastic crowd as next Saturday is "Pub Night" at our match. Hopefully a couple brews will get the home crowd pushing us towards a much needed victory.

On the docket this week is more of the same, a couple practices, a couple workouts and a couple floating sessions will hopefully keep me fresh for next weekend. Other than that, still just killing time and trying to stay warm (it's been around 30 and snowing a lot this week, so we don't venture out much). Hopefully I'll be able to write with much better news a week from now! And if you haven't already, click on that banner on the right side of this page to become a fan on Facebook! Thanks, we'll talk soon.