Week 4 Recap
Week four was played under the lights against the heavy serving crew of Lew Mar. Game one found the Spikers struggling to return Lew Mar’s serves. The SP squad found themselves in a fairly deep hole and seemed out of position and a little out of sync during the middle parts where Lew Mar took their big lead. On a positive not, Spiked Punch did correctly guess which hand the referee held the pebble in to start game one.
Game two again had Lew Mar get off to a big early lead behind their tough serves. Spiked Punch was doing a good job of bumping the inital serves, but had difficulty finishing their plays. Too many finishes found their way into the wrong side of the net for the Punchers. Despite dropping game two to Lew Mar, Spiked Punch did stick together and decided to make a defensive adjustment in the back grow to start game three.
With the defensive adjustment and solid serving by Joe, Alisson, Rich and Eric; Spiked Punch got off to a decisive lead that they would not surrender. Solid overall play by team MVP’s Geoff and Natale contributed heavily in the game three victory. Much improved performance by Spiked Punch than the previous two games. Nice to close out on a good note, hopefully we can carry that over into next weeks game.
June 27th, 2007 at 11:17 am
“We really did not play that bad, and we’re still a new team. We do have to practice on our serves because we’re losing too many points that way”
June 27th, 2007 at 11:28 am
“For a minute it looked like Deja vu all over again in the first two games as we struggled to return their serves just as Geoff and I remembered in our playoff loss to them last year. However, we picked it up in the third game, got a handle on their serves, and ended up beating them pretty comfortably in the last game. The key against Lew Mar is getting those rocket serves back, once we were able to do that; we outplayed them. They’re tough but I am definitely looking forward to getting another crack at them on 8/7.
Allison is so right about our serving too, no doubt the RETURN of serve was the glaring factor in why we lost 2/3 last night but you have to be able to get some free points on your own serve and more important than that we have to stop giving away points on our serve. We must have had close to ten service errors (serves into the net or out) and I had several myself so we have to try and get more service winners.”
June 27th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I think their serving made us bump better by the third game. We are improving as a team each week, which is really good to see. I just want to warn everybody about those crazy moving boundary lines in the back of the court. The can just jump out and grab you out of nowhere. Be careful, please be careful.
June 28th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Well game one for me since high school, and must say that I was a bit sloppy and unfamilier with the size of the court. Just let me tell you that this happens only on my first go around but by the third game I had felt better and us as a team stepped up and realized that we needed to serve the ball to get some points in our favor. As eric did mention, it had to be at least ten serve errors and all that does is give points away while the rest of our team watches the ball go to the other team and we get ready for the return. I believe were only going to get better from here so put that behind us and lets get some more wins next game!
June 28th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Tonight’s practice proved that persistence pays off. The bumping was awesome. Also, Eric and I purposely stood closer to the net during the second and third games of our final best of three. If you noticed, when serves the were high, we raised our hands and used a set-approach to get the ball in the air. Then, Eric or I bumped a set into position for a spike. ANy lower serves were bumped and since we were up, we had a better chance to score since we were close to the net.
The service returns from Rich, Joe and “8 Beer” Bill were also way better as the night went on.
I feel really good about our progress. The communication is getting better.
Joe’s strategy to intimidate his opponents by refusing bug repellant is worth noting, too. Stupidity or strategic brilliance? You decide.
June 29th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Yeah I don’t like bugs too much right now. However if you’re keeping score I just have a few minor bug bites and there’s at least 30 or so dead green heads lying in that sand now, so I think I think I made out all right.
My blocks on Geoff and Eric were super awesome. They almost made me forget all the rest of the bad plays I made, and there were so very many of them.