Playoff time

Hej hej, I know it's been a while since my last update again, but the last couple regular season matches had no real meaning as far as the playoffs were concerned so I figured I would wait until I had some real news. Just to sum it up, we beat Vingåker at home in four sets on the 13th and lost to Falköping on the road in four on the 20th. To finish up the regular season we had Habo at home tonight, a team we beat in five sets after being down 0-2 back in December. Tonight was a little bit of deja vu.

We dropped a tight first set 26-24 and then continued the same type of play in set two with a disappointing 25-22 loss. For whatever reason, we would be up late in the teens and then allow a four or five point run and be right back in a hole again. Luckily we turned things around with a dominant 25-12 win in the third set. Definitely the best that we played but we really didn't have to do much to win. We drastically cut back on our errors and took advantage of a lot of low swings by Habo and blocked or touched a ton of balls. They were definitely frustrated but came out much better in the fourth.

We jumped out to an 8-4 lead but they battled back and we went to the second technical timeout up 16-15. That's when things got interesting. We had a back and fourth final third of that set until we found ourselves up 24-23. Me and our setter, Peter went

out strong to block their big gun, who was hitting from the left side on that play. On the way down I bumped into Peter in the air and he ended up landing on my foot and turning his ankle. Down 2-1 in sets and late in the fourth is not a good time to lose basically the most important player on the court. Since our backup setter, Andy, was playing outside in the game we had no one to come in and set for us. That's where I come in. I was middle front at the time, so we subbed in one of our outsides, Jocke, and let him and Erik Brandsjö hit with me setting high balls out of the middle. Needless to say, I have never been a setter in my life but I can set high balls well enough. My first set was to Erik and they touched his attack and ended up killing it on us. The next play we got another good pass but this time I set Eric Simon on the back row attack. It might have been a little tough, but nothing wrong with letting your hitters fly a little bit. Anyways, Andy took over once he got in the front row and we ended up winning that set 28-26 to push it to five. I'm definitely adding "Setter" to my resume of positions.

Andy took over setting duties and we won game five fairly easily 15-8. We finished the season right at .500. A record of 9-9 in matches, 34-34 in sets and 1,523-1,500 in overall points makes this season one of the most mediocre in volleyball history. But now is the time of the season that really matters, playoffs. After a lot of speculation and wrong guessing, Linköping ended up picking us to play in the first round. Honestly, I was hoping to avoid them but we have beaten them in Tierp and no matter who we played it was going to be a challenge. The best of five quarterfinal series starts next Sunday in Linköping and then continues next Thursday and Sunday, if necessary matches four and five will be the following Tuesday and Thursday. The home team switches off every match. Anything can happen in the playoffs, so hopefully we pull off a March Madness upset of our own.

For me personally, I finished twelfth in the league in blocks and eighth in the league in service aces. I definitely should have been credited with more service aces (at least four, which would have put me in third), but the stat taking, especially for the road team isn't very accurate. I was in the top 15 in total points back when I was playing opposite but moving to middle and missing a match dropped me out of the top 25. I've never been much of a personal stats guy. I'm only going to judge this season on how the next couple of weeks go so hopefully I'll have something good to look back on.

Thanks for reading and I'll update with more playoff info soon. Go Tierp!

February update

So I know that it's been forever since I've updated, but those of you who have been reading all season know that the last thing I want to do after a loss is jump online and write about it. So take your best guess as to how things have been going.

After a couple promising wins over second place Orkelljunga in early January things took a turn for the worse. We went on the road and got smoked by a Linkoping team that is really coming on strong at the end of the season. From there we hosted first place Sollentuna and third place Falkenberg within four days of each other. Strong starts against both teams (including being up 2-1 and 18-14 on Falkenberg) ended up in a four and five set loss, respectively.

Luckily, this past weekend we had a road trip to Lund on the schedule. Lund is the last place team, having only earned one point in the standings all year, from a five set loss on the first Sunday of the season. Us being the northern-most team in the league and Lund being the southern-most (right by Malmö just across a bridge from Copenhagen), this match made for quite an adventure of a weekend.

It began Saturday morning getting on the first of three trains in seven hours in Tierp. After a transfer in Uppsala and one in Stockholm we only had four hours to go. The train wasn't that bad on the way there, much better than the normal back seat of the van that I normally spend my weekends in.

The match started out about as well as possible. We won the first game handily, 25-15. Everything went right and basically as long as we didn't make an error, we scored the point. The second game the tables turned. Lund is by no means a good offensive team, but they do a good job touching everything and they dig a ton of balls. That caught up to us in game two and we lost 25-23. After the halftime break, and some team attitude adjustment by yours truly, we knew all we needed to do was stick together and not make errors and there was no way we were going to lose this match.

We came out much better in game three and won relatively easily 25-19. Our offense was looking much better and our defense stepped up as much as theirs. Game four wasn't quite as good but we battled through it and won 25-23 on a missed serve. Finally we earned another three points and up to sixth place, not where we pictured being at this point in the season but moving in the right direction.

I should probably explain how playoffs work since we'll be there in three weeks. The top eight teams make the playoffs, those are already decided with Lund and Vingaker having been eliminated a couple weeks ago. The top four seeds (currently Sollentuna, Orkelljunga, Falkenberg and Linkoping) then pick who they want to play out of the 5-8 seeds. Sollentuna would pick first as of right now. Based on how we've played against Sollentuna,

Orkelljunga and Falkenberg, we highly doubt that they will pick us to play in the first round. So most likely we will end up playing whichever team ends up the fourth seed. From there it's best of five matches in each round. So if we hit a hot streak we know we can beat any team in the league three out of five times. It's just a matter of getting it done.

Moving back to the weekend, the next 24 hours were quite the adventure. Since we played on Saturday, and our normal Sunday matches kill any possibility of going out on the weekends, we had to take advantage and go out while we were down in Malmö, Sweden's third biggest city. We had a great, and late night bar hopping. But then came the dreaded early morning. At seven AM, we were back on our seven hour train ride home, most of us still in a zombie-like trance. Eventually we made it back to Tierp around three o'clock. Quite an adventure, but well worth it to finally get back in the win column. Vingaker at home this weekend...

Round Ten: The Rematch

After a successful bronze medal match against Örkelljunga in the Grand Prix it was probably a good thing that they would be our first opponent of the second half on Sunday. We sent a pretty good message through a hard-fought five set win and all we had to do was continue that play on Sunday to get our first three points of the new year. That's exactly what we did.

OVK is a very solid team that started out the season on fire by winning their first seven matches including a sweep of us in week two. It seemed like they would run away with the points title at that point and be the undisputed number one seed in the playoffs. They have hit a rough patch recently though and have slipped into third place. We, on the other hand, are a team headed in the right direction. This would be our second league match with our highly successful new lineup and we knew there was no reason we shouldn't take three points home on Sunday night.

Set one started out just like we thought it would, in a battle. Both teams were playing really aggressively and it was a battle all the way to the end of the first set. Eventually we got out on top with leads of 16-15 and 21-19 and were able to finish the set strong with a 25-23 win. It was probably the most aggressive we've been all year and it paid off greatly. Set two was arguably our best all year. We jumped on top of them right away, leading 8-6 and the 16-11 and never looking back. They couldn't get anything going offensively and their frustration showed as the game went on. It was nice to be on that side of a set for once. We went on to win 25-18 and take a 2-0 lead into the ten minute halftime break.

While the ten minute break allows some time to rest and regroup for a team down 0-2, it also kills all momentum for a team up 2-0 and makes winning the third set that much more challenging. We came out flat in the third set as the ball started bouncing their way a little more. We lost 25-20 and had to regroup before a crucial fourth set. There's no way we could allow them to push the match to five on our home court., and we didn't.

We dominated the fourth set pretty easily, jumping out to leads of 8-4 and 16-10 before finishing even stronger at 25-15. They couldn't seem to do anything right, and even their subs couldn't get passed our block. It was definitely the best all around match we played all year. We blocked 14 balls in four sets and touched a ton more which allowed our defense to pick up a ton of digs. We also only had five hitting errors the whole match, a great improvement over pretty much every match we've played all year.

I played well and am getting more and more comfortable in the middle. I had 12 points on six blocks and six kills and touched a ton of balls blocking, which goes a long way to frustrating the opponents hitters.

Up next is a road game against Linköping on Sunday, hopefully continuing in the right direction. Thanks for reading!

If you want to watch the match it will be online at volleykanalen.se for the rest of the season!

Grand Prix Update

After a two week break for the holidays, we finally got to play in the Swedish Grand Prix. Qualifying for this mini-tournament was our main goal for the first half of the season. To qualify, you must be in the top four teams in the Eliterien. If you've been keeping up with my blog you know that we barely squeaked in on the last day of the season's first half. This was also the first time since 2005 that Tierp qualified for it, so it was a pretty big deal for everyone involved. The two-day tournament is held in a town about three hours away called Katrineholm, it's a little bigger than Tierp and seeing actual stop lights was kind of weird.

We ended up being the fourth seed, so up first was first place Sollentuna on Wednesday night. Sollentuna is a team that we know we can beat. A couple months ago we played them at their gym and lost in a four set match that we definitely should have won. We lost sets one and four after leading 21-18 in both, so we really just need to learn to finish games off against them. They really don't do anything too special. They run a relatively fast offense and their main guys are one of their outsides and their Brazilian opposite, who is not very impressive at all.

We played a lineup that we haven't played with all year. Kyle and I were in the middle again, Eric Simon played opposite, Erik Brandsjo and Andy Wahlstrom played the outsidess with Peter setting and Martin Molynerd at libero. We started out playing pretty well but couldn't close out the close games against them as usual. We lost in three but it was a battle. So it was on to play Orkelljunga in the third place match.

The third place match was meaningless for all intents and purposes, but we are playing Orkelljunga this Sunday in our first match of the second half and a win against them would send a good message to them and the rest of the league. However, we would be playing without one of our best players, Kyle Masterson, who sprained his foot badly in the Sollentuna match when one of their middles came way under the net (not surprisingly, the refs missed the call). So it would be Matti Sandelin and I in the middle with the rest of the lineup the same.

So far this year, I'd say it was one of the most fun matches we have played. The whole five set match was back and forth. It was pretty impressive to watch and a lot of fun to play in. They took the first set before we battled back to win the second and third. The fourth set was a close battle to the end with them pulling out the victory to push it to five sets. We jumped out to the lead in the fifth set, leading 8-6 at the side switch and it was back and forth from there before we won 17-15. I finished the match with nine kills and three blocks so it was productive day for me. I'm slowly getting back into this middle thing but so far it's been a lot of fun. As long as I'm up early the rest of the offense will be very good for the rest of the season. And with Andy and Molle passing, we should have a great second half.

The rematch with Orkelljunga kicks it off on Sunday at five o'clock here. If you want to watch the match is the featured one for the online broadcast. Here's the link, set your alarms for 10 AM US Central time:

Tierp - Orkelljunga

Tack for reading! See you online!

Grand Prix Broadcast!

Wednesday night is our first match of the 2011 Swedish Grand Prix and luckily for you it will be broadcast live online! The semifinal match, which pits us against Sollentuna, starts at 6:30 PM CET, 11:30 AM Chicago time. Here's the link for the website:

http://www.volleykanalen.se/

Halfway There

Hey everyone, I know it's been like two weeks since my last entry so we have some catching up to do so let's get to it. We knew that if we won our last two matches going into the winter break we would definitely have a spot in the Grand Prix the first weekend of January, but of course we had to make it interesting.

Our match against Falkoping on the 12th was another disappointing one that eventually ended in our first home loss of the season. The match went to four sets, but for whatever reason we were never really comfortable playing that day. Our passing was pretty poor all day and offensively we couldn't seem to do anything right. We knew that we would still have an outside chance of jumping into the top four and getting the Grand Prix bid, but we had to beat a decent Habo team on the road, where we've won just once all year.

We made some changes in the lineup, including moving me to middle blocker and Eric Simon to opposite, and had a pretty good week of practice leading up to our trip down to Habo (another 7 AM van trip) and hoped to get off to the good start that we desperately needed. That didn't happen. We dropped the first two sets in a couple close ones. Going into the ten minute halftime break we thought that we had already been eliminated from the top four. We had a good team talk and went out with a whole new attitude in the third set. We knew we had nothing to lose.

The match completely changed after that break and we stormed back for a five set win, including dominating set five, where we led 10-1 at one point. The last three sets were probably the best we played all year, we were getting a lot of good touches blocking, which means it's a lot easier to play defense behind it. And offensively, we drastically cut down on the errors that normally kill us.

We got to the locker room and some of the guys immediately turned to their iPhones to check the other scores from around the league. We realized that Hylte was our main competition for the last spot and they needed to get all three points on the day (a three or four set win) against Linkoping. We watched the points add up for Linkoping through the first three sets and were extremely relieved when they took a two sets to one lead, which meant that Hylte could only get two standings points and that put us in the Grand Prix!

This was a huge relief for us as missing the Grand Prix would definitely mean we were underachieving greatly in the first half of the season. Going into the two-week Christmas break we are feeling pretty good about our prospects for a strong second half with a new lineup and hopefully a signature win to gain some momentum. We got most of our difficult road matches out of the way in the first half so as long as we can protect our barn down the stretch we should end up with a good playoff seed.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, I'll have some more Grand Prix info when I get back to Sweden at the end of this week!

Round Seven: Road Warriors

The one thing we knew going into the last three matches before the holiday break was that our fate is in our own hands. If we found a way to win these last three matches we would be in the Swedish Grand Prix, the beginning of January tournament of the top four teams in the country. However, we would have to get two of those three wins on the road, something that had alluded us so far this season.

The first match was today at Vingåker, a team that came into the match at 0-6 in the league. After playing the match I was personally surprised that this team hasn't won this season. They have to very solid middles and a good setter to go along with a less than average pin offense. We knew going into the match that if we controlled their middles we would win.

Game one was our typical slow start. We let a couple balls drop that should have been picked up and defensively it seemed like we were a step slow. Thankfully we figured it out and after a tough battle through the teens we took a 21-18 lead. Of course we made it a little interesting before pulling it out 25-23. It was only our second game win of the season on the road and we had to make sure that we carried that momentum into game two. We did.

We jumped out to an 8-4 lead before I came up to serve. For the first time since I got here basically I had a great game jump serving. I went on a five point run to put us up 13-4, which included a couple aces and a couple overpasses forced. As much as I'd like to take credit for hard work, I think the ball has made the most difference. Most matches we have played this year have been with a ball that for some reason doesn't do what I want it to do when I'm serving. It's a little heavier than the one we used today (which is actually the official FIVB international ball), and I just can't seem to get the toss right, or the ball to snap in bounds with top spin. But we just got an order of the lighter ones in at our home gym and have been able to practice with them this week. It made a world of difference in our match tonight, hitting and serving. Anyways, we took a 16-8 lead into the second technical timeout and were feeling good about about the way things were going. They proceeded to cut into the lead with a series of float servers to make it 21-16 and we limped to the finish for another 25-23 win.

Game three was a game that we had to have, not only to make sure we got three points, but to make sure we get some confidence in a gym other than our own. They kept it close until the first technical timeout, we led 8-7, but we broke away from there. A huge serving run from Kyle Masterson pushed our lead to 16-8 and we kept our foot on the gas all the way to the end for a change. It seems they couldn't do anything right, which was punctuated with a missed serve by them on match point.

Hopefully this match will be a sign of things to come. We played much more like a team today than we have been playing recently and it showed in the results. It may have been thanks to a change at libero, but in any case, it was good to see us finish games better than we have been.

While the match was going on I didn't feel like it was the best match I've played this season, but stats-wise it definitely was. I finished with 12 kills and three aces for a match leading 15 points, so I'll take that any day.

Upcoming this week, it looks like me and Eric are finally going to make a trip to Stockholm on Wednesday to check it out and we have a solid team in Falkoping coming up to Tierp this Sunday for our last home match before the three-week holiday break. Hopefully we can keep things headed in the right direction. God natt!