Not a terrific week for Practice Safe Sets. Here are the game recaps:

Game 1 versus “Bench Warmers” (lost 2 sets to none): This team features some of the best players I have played over my time playing intramurals at UVic. I’ve played them nearly every semester since I started playing. We battled hard in both sets that we lost. In fact, the second set, we were leading late but they battled back to go back and forth (you have to win by two points in volleyball – games are to 21 otherwise) until the end when the score was 24-24. At that point, it’s next point wins in the interest of time. We lost on the last point unfortunately. From a learning/coaching perspective, it’s clear that we lost because we weren’t consistent in our serving to close out the set. Obviously, this is something we need to work on as a team in order to stay competitive in this league. Serving is one of the few things in volleyball that is a purely singular skill, as in it has nothing to do with the rest of the team. Perhaps the pressure of the high stakes of the game got to us as it was our turn to serve, but fixing 2-3 mistakes individually would’ve caused us to win the set and have a chance to play a 3rd set to win the match.

Here’s a guide to serving overhand:

Game 2 Recap (Practice Safe Sets vs “Diggin’ Divas” (lost 2 sets to none): Our first game took a lot out of us…we were gassed from the start of another game against a strong opponent. I think at one point the score was 17-6 for the Divas. They picked us apart with their serve. Goes to show that not only is having a consistent serve very important, but also the ability to play the serve accurately. We call it “serve receive” and it’s one of the most important skills a successful team can possess. The idea is you need a good first pass on the ball to the setter so they can set up an attack with as minimal movement and effort as possible. As soon as that first pass is off the mark, then the setter is exerting extra energy to move to ball for a good set. Efficiency is important in staying with the flow of game long-term. As a result of our poor passing, we weren’t able to create offensive plays effectively, and every ball we sent back to the Divas was easily received and returned with vigour. We were done from the get go.

Here’s me talking about positioning in a very rudimentary way: