Spiked Punch

Well Week 5 turned out to be quite an interesting week. Apparenly there’s a schedule mix up, that has affected at least three division BB teams. As it turns out the “new” schedule had us with a bye in week 5, not playing the Wild Cats.

Well since the Wild Cats schedule was messed up too both teams decided to scrimmage on an available court. Spiked Punch was without team captain Eric who is out of town and Natale who perhaps was the only one with a correct schedule? But filling in was Mike and newcomer Bill. Mike got off to a pretty hot start, dominating play at the net.

However, the wind was angry on this night and the serving paid dearly for it. Steady serving Alison was the only consistant server for the Spiked Punch. Bumping and setting seems to be improving by all every week, but for the most part play was very loose as this was just a scrimmage with both teams not wanting to to tip their hands too much before next weeks contest (if the schedule doesn’t magically change again).

So until the schedule is officially corrected our next game is on July 10, at 6:00 PM against the Wild Cats. Hope to see everyone at practice Thursday night around 6:30 PM, have a happy 4th of July.

A photo gallery has been added to spikedpunchvolleyball.com. Hopefully we’ll get some more cool photos up there as the season progresses. It has a really cool admin section where we can have accounts and login and upload photos and it takes care of all the resizing, putting them in galleries, etc. So it’s pretty cool.

Just let me know if you want access to it, it just takes a second to set you up. Also let me know if something seems broken with it. I haven’t tested it in any Windows browsers yet and might have to make some further adjustments.

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.

Joe is suffering from a right shoulder sprain. He is not expected to miss any games, estimated time of recovery is 4-6 weeks. If a Sponge Bob Square Pants BAND-AID is applied to the shoulder and he takes 2 Wild Cherry Luden’s then recovery time will be reduced to 15 minutes.

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.

Just got done a super awesome practice in Mays Landing near where Eric lives. I dedicated my performance to my inspiration, Wen. It was four of us so first we just did some volleying in a circle, I think the record was 15 or 16 in a row. Not too shabby. I did hit 2 into the pool, so had to climb the fence twice. That was pretty cool.

Then it rained really hard and we headed to the rain shelter. We then played some exciting 2 on 2. Despite looking directly into the sun all game, Eric and I defeated Geoff and Allison in a most intense overtime game. I have never felt such pressure.

I peed outside. And we did some more practicing. I used to have a lump in my finger from when I broke/sprained it about 4 years ago. But I seem to of reinjured it while practicing and now the lump is gone! Hopefully it won’t come back again. Though I must confess it does hurt like hell. Fear not, it isn’t my mousing hand.