March Madness

So, a lot to catch up on in the last week. To save you from the suspense, I will tell you that our fifth and final match against Linköping is tomorrow night. Winner moves on, loser is done. Somehow I knew that this series would go all five matches, but I had no idea how epic the first four would be.

I've already gone over the five set heartbreaker that was match one, but match two was just as incredible. We won the first set and the proceeded to drop the next two. We knew we had

to defend "our barn" if we were to have any chance in this series and it showed in the fourth set with a 25-17 crushing, including a late five point serving run by yours truly. The fifth set started out about as poorly as possible for us, falling down 5-1 and then 9-5 but somehow we kept battling and thanks to a couple huge defensive plays and some timely errors by our opponents we fought our way back and scored 10 of the last 12 points and won 15-11. It was a pretty amazing match and a huge boost to our team confidence to finally pull out a marathon of a match. We could also feel some excitement from the town, and I ended up with a pretty sweet picture on the cover of the Uppsala newspaper the next morning. Going into match three we were feeling pretty good about our prospects of stealing the match on the road that we needed. Things didn't quite go as planned.

Match three was one I'd rather block out of my memory completely. It was an absolute train wreck basically from start to finish. We got completely smoked in the first and third set, showing a little bit of life in the second, but failing to convert our set point opportunity and losing that set 26-24. We really couldn't get anything going, our outsides got blocked a lot and we didn't pass well enough to get Kyle and I involved as much as we would like. It was also one of those days where the ball just kept finding a way to sneak by us. I thought Kyle and I were pretty consistently in the right place to make a block and the ball just wouldn't find us. Luckily, that luck turned around on Tuesday night back in Tierp.

From the first ball, I knew that this was going to be my best match of the season. We started the match receiving and after a perfect pass I got a great set from Peter and absolutely crushed one to zone five for the first point of the match. Since I started playing middle for some reason Peter and I have had a really hard time getting a consistent connection going. Tuesday night was the first time I think we really felt comfortable with each other, and he kept feeding me all match. Anyways, after that first kill I was up to serve and reeled off four more points, including two aces, to take a fast 5-0 lead to begin the match. They never got closer than three points from us for the rest of the first set and we cruised in feeling good with a 25-19 victory.

Game two was another huge letdown for the entire team. Absolutely nothing went right for us, and we got smoked 25-13. We just had to keep things in perspective and realize that all that means is the match is tied and that score can't hurt us anymore.

Moving on to set three, things were still kind of going their way for most of the time. It was back and forth for a long time before they ended up taking a 21-16 lead. Like so many times before in this series we knew we could fight our way back into that set. After some high-pressure serving from Kyle and a couple blocks by me, we found ourselves ties at 22-22 and eventually clawed our way to a 25-23 victory and a 2-1 match lead.

Set four was a typical one for this series, they led 8-5 at the first technical timeout, but we fought back to take a 16-13 lead to the second one. From there on out we were clinging to small

leads and eventually found ourselves serving at 24-23. I've already gone over just how horrible the refs are here, but they really haven't changed all season so it really should be no surprise, but eventually the calls had to start going our way, and what better time than on a set point? They had a shaky pass and set one of their big guns, Luke Smith, who can basically hit over any block. He did just that with a pretty good roll shot to deep zone one that clearly land on the inside of the line. The whole gym waited for the call as both refs looked at each other, eventually the up ref lifted his arm in our direction. We were definitely owed a couple calls over the course of the match so I don't feel too bad about getting the benefit of that call.

As I said at the beginning, I just knew I was going to have a great match and I did. Eight kills on 10 swings, two aces and four blocks earned me my first match MVP of the season. Here's hoping that I can repeat the results on Thursday night and we can move on to play Falkenberg this weekend! Thanks for reading, I'll write soon. Go Tierp!