Hey everyone,
Sorry for the delay in getting some information up here. It has been and extremely hectic 2 weeks. We have gone through some extreme emotional situations over the past 2 weeks and we are truly just starting the recovery and rebuilding process.
Since my last time on here we were at 7-6 and just prior to that we were 7-3 on the season. I am sad to say that the left column hasn't changed in the past 2 weeks and we are now sitting at 7-13 on the season. We have battled hard in most of the matches and had to change our lineups for numerous situations. Coming out of the Viterbo tournament we felt that we were close to getting our consistency figured out on offense and just needed a little bit of pure focus on certain areas of our game to get things running smoothly again. We entered into conference play that week against Dordt and unfortunately our SR passing was not consistent to allow us to get our primary hitters involved in a faster tempo offense to keep their big block split more often and ended up dropping the match 0-3. We had the weekend off to let the team refocus and get away from volleyball for a little bit and be able to come back with a renewed passion and eagerness to learn. Our 3 practices heading into our next conference match against Morningside were highly competitive and intense, we had confidence. We battled during the first set and felt that we let the first set slip away from us with some untimely errors at the end of the set. We then ran into the buzz saw of the Morningside offense as they went through the next 2 sets without committing a single attacking error (there is no one in the country that can beat a team that doesn't commit errors).
We understood that our first 2 opponents for conference play were high quality teams and matches that we were the considered the underdogs. We approached the weekend knowing that our opponent, Concordia, had been playing well and that our two teams were evenly matched. It was going to be a very tough match for both teams. Each team traded sets all the way up to the 5th set and most of the sets were close outside of our 2nd set victory where controlled all of the play to a 25-15 win. I knew that we were the more talented team at that time but hoped that our inability to play consistently was gone for the day. Set 3 both teams played well but they outlasted us. In Set 4 we played better statistically but they fought to keep it close. Then in the 5th, the error bug bit us and bit us in a major way. We opened up the 5th with 5 or 6 straight unforced errors and put ourselves in a major hole that we weren't able to get out of and went on to lose the 5th set. It was crushing lose to us knowing we had an opportunity to close them out and couldn't do it. The worst part for me as a coach is looking at the statistics and seeing that nearly all of the stat categories we won, just not the one that counts, the game scores. I left the gym wondering if a match like this would have a hangover affect on our team. I would get to find out the next week as we went to face Mt. Marty.
Let me preface this next section by saying that this could could be one of the toughest weeks to ever go through as a coach or player.
Even to this day I believe that we are leaps and bounds much better than Mt. Marty and have and incredible amount of talent and athleticism over them. However, on the night we played them it had to be the worst match we have ever played. We committed a total of 55 to 60 errors in the 4 sets we played. Yes, we gave them 2 sets worth of points in our own errors. It was one of the more disappointing matches I have ever been involved in and it was heartbreaking to the team as well. The recovery process was going to be long and the demeanor of the team needed to change as well as the lineup. So we approached the next day at practice (with only 1 day to prepare for the next match) with an intense team meeting and a complete refocus on accountability on the court. I felt good about the meeting and the response from the team in their understanding of the new goals set ahead of them. Then the chaos and adversity we thought we had just gotten past hit square in the face as our senior OH, went down from landing awkwardly after an attack to a devastating knee injury. The positive energy and emotion we had flowing in the gym came to a screeching halt in a matter of seconds. Our thoughts about preparation for USF went directly to concern for her; we had once again lost our focus on the task at hand. As we continued with practice the need for a new lineup was absolutely necessary as we now had to figure out how to fill the hole left by the injury and who would be able to pick up the slack as now our 2nd leading attacker was most likely done for the season. We took the rest of practice not preparing for USF but figuring out which lineup would give us the best shot at competing the next night. We entered into the match against USF knowing we were just trying to figure things out and hoping to play well. We started the match very slow but managed to nearly find a way to win the first as we held a lead very late in the set around 25-24 but then went on to lose the set 27-29. Heart, fight, guts whatever you want to call, we showed it in the first set and were hoping to continue that trend through the rest of the match. The 2nd set was similar albeit that we stayed close for nearly the entire set and didn't let up, but then the error bug bit us again and we dropped the 2nd set 19-25 and the 3rd set was filled with unforced errors that not even our defense could remedy to help extend rallies. We spoke after the match about what qualities we need to have with the team as we go forward knowing that we were needing to change lineups and do things we did not plan at the beginning of the year. It was a positive meeting and we all had an understanding about what needed to come from each person to get back on track.
We then tried to prepare for the weekend as we were making a trip to ND to face Jamestown and Valley City. Our main focus heading into the weekend and from here on out is to fight for every point, extend rallies and with play with great intensity. We played Jamestown on Saturday hearing the chatter in stands they believed that the match was going to go 3 and be the fastest match in their history. Well the first set certainly gave that indicator as we committed around 16 errors and they were errors that we had control over. We took the between game time to emphasize our decision making that was causing the errors and came out and absolutely dominated play for the first 2/3 of the 2nd set. We minimized our errors to where we stayed away from committing 3 or 4 in a row. We gave away 1 run of 4 or 5 points late in the set that got them kind of back in the set but we closed them out at 25-21 (it wasn't really that close until the last mini run by them). We were proving to ourselves that no matter who play if we limit the scoring runs we give on our own errors we can play with and beat anyone. It felt great. But could we do it in back to back sets? The answer unfortunately was no as we went on to commit 16 errors again in the 3rd set and 11 errors in the 4th set. When we keep the amount of errors to 10 or less in any given set we have won nearly all of those sets this season. The Valley City match ended up being a lot of the same from the week, we committed numerous errors in a row early in sets and then had to fight back to get back in it. Our set scores were 19, 22 and 23, the team battled so fiercely and I believe we will get this ship righted very soon, as long as we begin to learn how to limit the errors we give away in a row. We also had to deal with our senior MH get extremely sick during the weekend and then could barely play against Valley City. So we had to adjust our lineup again without preparation. We'll see what happens this upcoming week as we get back into conference play and search for the conference win that has eluded us thus far. Wish us luck and wish us healthy.
-Coach V
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