Week #5 - Recovery and Team Commitment

So the illness bug has come around and hit us pretty hard the past week. We were going to through practices the past week with 8-10 people out for every practice. It was one of those moments as a coach where it is certainly the time to have your adaptability skills at their best. At the start of the we all felt great about some good performances from the weekend in Sioux City. But something was a little off on Monday as I felt a lot of our players kind of dragging and very low with energy. Then it started 1 by 1 the information kept coming me, this 2 has this illness, this 2 have this, and these 3 possibly have this. It was like it never ended, well it seemed like it because Jayna kept pretending to be sick with her fake cough (keep practicing, Neba. lol).

So Monday we tried to prepare for Dordt with what we had. We still felt pretty good about what we could do in that match. The very next day we got word that Carina was sick with something that had to hold her out for the match and not let her travel. So immediately I had to let Kalissa and Rosebud know that they would have to fill in and that our gameplan has now been switched to a 6-2 setup and our lineup would be very different than we practiced. It was hectic leading up to our arrival to Dordt. We had some people playing in the JV match that hadn't played before and made a true sacrifice and commitment to the team to get it done (Thank you Leah for stepping up all week). The JV match was a little rough as Dordt took the match fairly easily as our serve receive passing just wasn't up to par all match.

The varsity match was probably a little nerve racking for everyone as we weren't exactly sure how we would respond to the adversity we were facing with a limited roster. My only concern of the night came when we dropped 4 of the first 5 points of the match with no intensity, I had to quickly call a timeout and remedy the situation. We then came back to to the game and go point for point the rest of game. The first game even had probably one of the best rallies that any of us had been a part of playing or coaching. It lasted about a minute and included:
- First attack saved by player with over the shoulder swing with back to net and at sharp angle
- Hard swing dug and ball saved from 25ft away from court off of a light fixture and sent over as other team was celebrating
- Celebrating team saves ball and gets another attack
- Play proceeds to have 2 diving plays to the right back corner from both team's middle back players
- A sideline diving save by a libero after one of the diving plays in the right back is sent over
- A double block that is covered and continued play
- Overpass kill to finish play

I am putting this rally in a Play of the Week contest sponsored by the AVCA. Voting will begin I think on Thursday so please check out http://www.avca.org/ to vote for our play if it makes the final cut. I darn well better since in comparison to the plays from last week, this one blows all of them out of the water.

Ok, getting back to the actual playing. The Dordt match went very well. We played great under the circumstances and handled everything Dordt threw at us. We just gave away one 4-5 point run too many in all 3 games which ended up being the difference in each game. The team proved again that they are worthy of being put in to a higher category than anyone else puts them and that they just need to find a level of consistency with intensity and decision making that keeps them at the top of their game all match long. It was great to see. Kalissa and Bud deserve a lot of kudos for stepping in with basically same day notice to handle a difficult setting job against a top team in the conference.

We ended up deciding that this was going to be the week of recovery. We felt fortunate that we only had one match on Friday and nothing else the rest of the weekend. We had the confident feeling that with the one match on Friday being against Mt. Marty and that we had 2 days to prepare we could get back to healthy and not over exert ourselves as program. Our recovery was slow and we didn't get back to full strength by Friday. We came out a little flat agianst Mt. Marty with a lot of errors from our JV team in their match which ended up costing them a 3 game loss. However, Polly did play a good MH position (which she hasn't done since HS) while Rosebud and Kalissa did an admirable job of trying to put our hitters into good situations to swing at a smaller Mt. Marty block.

Carina was cleared to play but we needed to limit her involvement. Leah again stepped up to the plate and started at MH for us in place of a sick Kacie. The start of the varsity match was very nerve racking as we came out flat and committed a lot of hitting and serving errors in the first game which gave Mt. Marty half of there points for the game. We found a way to win the first game which then led into a completely dominating performance in game 2 which then allowed us to use our bench more and save energy of our sick players. It was a great team effort.

Over the week we put together two very good TEAM performances and had some people in some different setups for our lineup. The sacrifice and commitment level was very apparent last week from everyone. We will need again for the upcoming week as we are still within our recovery phase. We play at Dakota State on Tuesday and then host Morningside for our Homecoming match on Friday and then Briar Cliff on Saturday for our DIG PINK match. To support the DIG PINK effort please follow the volleyball website http://www.dwu.edu/athletics/volleyball/index.htm and click on the Dig Pink logo to get to the place where you can donate to the cause.


- Coach V