2 weeks later and we are finally back to normal

I last left you DWU VB fans with us getting ready to head into some very winnable matches against Mt. Marty, Dakota State, Valley City and Jamestown.  We knew going in we were still without the services of juniors Sam Sandau and Rachel Tinklenberg for another 2 weeks.  Our young players were just going to have to play at a higher level of consistency.

The goal was to get at least 2 or 3 wins over during the week.  We started with Mount Marty on Tuesday and hosting them at the Corn Palace.  It seems at least every other year Mount Marty turns out to be a thorn in our side.  This just happened to be one of those years.  Not to take anything away from them, they played hard and relatively mistake free volleyball to beat us in 3 sets.  It was a very frustrating experience for our team as they finally learned that their careless attacking and serving errors truly matter against every opponent.  We committed a total 50 errors in the 3 set match.  Yes, we gave them the total of 2 sets worth of points on mistakes that we could mostly control the result.  It felt as if we hit the bottom as we sat in the locker room searching for any type of positive to speak of.  The only that came up was that we got to play another match the next day to get this terrible loss out of our minds.

We came in the next day with a renewed focus and some lineup changes.  Which I don't suggest all of the time without a practice session.  However, we felt a little desperate at the time for a change. Something clicked for the team relatively all night we were a dominate offensive team that just racked up kill after kill.  We still committed a few too many attacking errors but we countered those errors with kills in this match rather than playable attacks like in other matches.  It was a great match as we came out with a five set win at Dakota State.  You can see some highlights from this match at the following web link http://www.hudl.com/team/51690/highlights/12486819.

We then went on the road for the weekend to North Dakota to play Jamestown and Valley City.  Jamestown is a team receiving votes in the NAIA Top 25 vote and Valley City is a team we have nearly always gone to 4 or 5 sets with and all of the hotly contested. Our Jamestown match was played at a low error rate for us which was very nice to see.  We forced Jamestown to be the team to beat us and not ourselves.  We just couldn't earn enough kills or aces consistently enough to push the match to 4 sets.  We played well and even lead a few times in each set but once we got to that 16 to 17 point area Jamestown turned it on and we fizzled away.  We competed though and I believed that we were on the verge of playing better offensively and forcing teams to beat us rather than us giving them so many points.

Our match against Valley City was pretty much how we all expected it to go; every set with close scores and  trading the lead and ties in every set.  We split the first 2 sets to go into the 1-1 and we our game win was relatively dominate albeit the score may not show it.  We gave up a run at the end to make it closer than what it was.  And then the error bug crept up on us again as we felt pressure to be more aggressive offensively because of how well VCSU was playing defensively.  The last 2 sets were still close but we in each set we had 2 runs of points where we gave them 4 errors in row to put a little cushion between us to finish off the match.

We learned a lot as a team and some of our players rediscovered their roles to help us compete and be a more consistent team. Our energy level and emotional play was higher and we now know going into the next few weeks we will need to play at the highest level to achieve our goals.

Talk to all of you soon.
Coach V