Monday October 30: The Halloween week games with spooks, ghouls witches, and fools. We showed up with slightly renewed optimism following our close losses in the previous weeks to good teams. Now, we have played these teams before, all the way in Week 1. Part of the problem with this intramural league is there is no creativity involved in the schedule making process and we have played the same teams across the semester. Did we improve? We will see…
Game 1 (Practice Safe Sets versus I’d Hit That; lose 2 sets to 1): It should be said, two of our regular players were away this week, so we had a couple spares to call up. Both were accomplished volleyball players but maybe weren’t used to our systems. Regardless, we all played pretty well. In our first matchup against this team, we took them to three sets and this match was no different. We won the first set, thanks to an all-around well played game: good serves, good passes, good sets and good hits. The second set was much closer but we couldn’t put it home, the third set was quick (first to 5 points) and we lost 5-2. The team we played was decent but not as strong as some of the other teams we have played over the course of the semester. We’ve shown that we can take them to three sets in multiple matches but it’s a mental battle for us to be able to close out matches. I honestly can’t figure out why but my best guess is that loss after loss after loss has taken away some of our morale. It seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy in way: we don’t think we can win, so we don’t.
Game 2 (Practice Safe Sets versus Lord Volleymort; lost 2 sets to none): This game was embarrassing. You may remember Lord Volleymort as the only team we’ve been able to beat this year. We started the match well in control and played to our strengths and their weaknesses. Then, one of their players went on a serving streak of roughly 15 points. His serve wasn’t particularly strong or difficult to receive, but every time we went for a pass, it would go any number of directions. Obviously, it made it hard to get an attack together. Even if we did, we would lose the point on some flukey play coming back after the fact. We did get possession back and the score was 20-20. We would go on to lose 23-21 (have to win by two points). Second set, exact same thing: ahead early, playing well, then the same guy rips us apart on serving. I think this accentuates my earlier point about self-fulfilling prophecy. The serve was not that hard, but we couldn’t put anything together. We expected to lose and we lost.
