June 26th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
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 21st, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Week three’s opponent on Court One of Ventnor was the formidable JC Leap Agency. Spiked Punch was joined by special guest player Mike Maxwell. Mike signed a one week contract to play for Spiked Punch after being highly recommended by Alison. She thought Mike would contribute to our short handed team, she told us that he, “is tall and is a very good athlete”. It was a good signing for the team, and her words couldn’t of been more true.
Game one started with JC taking a nearly 10 point lead on the Punchers. It was beginning to look bleak, but behind the ace serving of Alison, Spiked Punch clawed it’s way back into the game and managed to pull off one of their toughest victories to date. Solid overall play from the trio of Natalie, Geoff, and Mike really enabled the team to pull of the victory.
The second game JC got off to a commanding lead, and never really looked back. They took the game rather handily, but the athletic plays made from Eric and the rest of the Spiked Punch crew towards the end of the game really carried over into the third and decisive game.
Game three can simply be highlighted by some big game serving. Looking into a swirling wind Joe, a member of Spiked Punch picked apart the JC defense to build a big early lead. Such a lead that JC was forced to use a timeout to regroup. However there would be no ability for the JC squad to regroup on this day. For MVP of the night Geoff brough his A-game serves which whizzed through and decimated the frightened JC defense.
It was a good feeling for the members of Spiked Punch to win two of three, with the practice a few nights before really paying off. Unforced errors still need to be worked on further, and the precision of our bumps and sets must still be improved upon for hopes of a title run. But big strides were made this week, congratulations to all.