Darkside Update 2/18/99

For those of you who didn't make it, or those of you which have forgotten, here is the summary of the 2/13/99 Eckerd Tournament.

After wrenching my back on the Tuesday preceding the tournament, I called Raik and told him he was setting. When we finally headed cross-state Saturday morning, we had Greg, Raik, Rob, Wade, Kurt, Jason, Shane and Rob's old Florida setter - Jay Mau showing. I came along to make sense of the madness, but don't know if I helped or hurt the cause.

The tournament was broken down into 2 pools with our pool being the AA pool and the other pool a B/BB. We had 5 teams and the format was round robin of 2 games to 15 starting at 4. Top team got the bye into the finals while 2nd and 3rd played in the semis.

Our first match was against Sets which was missing Tony Cothron. We jumped out to and early lead with some good blocking and continued to block and pass well throughout the match. Sets seemed uncharacteristically asleep and went quietly both games 15-8, 15-11.

We played Orlando Gold-18 next and played less than inspired volleyball, but won both 15-8, 15-5. Our next match was against Shag Me Baby which started well enough. It slowly became evident that the blocking that was so overpowering against Sets, didn't return for this match. When pressed, the offense couldn't side out or win the transitions at the pace needed to keep even in the game. We lost both, 15-6, 15-13. Many theories were proposed, but in the end it came down to execution and errors, blocking, passing, serving, setting and defense. When we did one thing right, we followed it by doing the next thing wrong. The score of the first game reflected it. The second game was a case of a few too many errors.

Our last match was against Boomers, another 18 team and we won this one handily, 15-10, 15-7. Sets split with Shag Me and the semis were determined:Darkside vs. Sets.

This match looked like a replay of the Shag Me match with our play remaining spotty while theirs elevated to playoff level. It wasn't one thing that hurt us alone. We missed a few serve receives with 0-option passes (overbumps, shanks), we converted on very few 2 on 1 blocks, we had a few hitting errors, we missed a serve or few... All total, it added up to 2 quick games, because Sets had many fewer mistakes. They dug us with regularity (true, many sets were low and off the net), and sided out almost effortlessly. For the record, the scores were 15-10, 15-6.

In the final, Shag Me had to play without their setter, Jamie who had to leave for a family function. They won the 1st game, fueled by some aggressive serving, 15-9. They lost the second game badly, 15-7 and won the 3rd rally scoring game mostly on their blocking and siding out, 15-11.

The DORKSIDE - We should just call this the "F-ed up free ball award". This weekend's winner was Raik. A lollypop free ball is looping over the net to land on the 3 meter line; true, the ball has spin on it. Raik steps up under it and passes it underhand to the setter. This is RAIK, not some non-passing 3 toed ... Either way, the ball gracefully arcs up and OVER the net to be crushed back down by the other team (at Raik, mind you) for the kill. Not the greatest weekend for "Court-mite".

We don't have any tournaments until the Hi-Neighbor in Asheville on 3/20/99.