After another week of getting shelled by a pair of superior volleyball teams, Practice Safe Sets responded well this week with a valiant effort against two strong teams. We still came up short in both matches but the effort was by far the strongest it’s been since the start of the season. Here are the game recaps:

Game 1 (Practice Safe Sets versus Wacka Blocka Flame; lost 2 sets to 1): Finally, a team that we could keep up with! We came out strong in the first set; defence was on point and as a result, we were able to create effective offensive plays. I have said time and time again about how important a strong “serve-receive” is for a good volleyball team: if you can’t get a good first pass on the serve, you can’t expect to create any substantial plays that put any pressure on your opponents. This was probably the first game in which we pushed the pace of the game on our opponents and it all stems from our improved serve receive. As well, this week we were much more accurate with our own serves. The obvious implication of a poor service game is that you just hand points away to your opponents. At the very least, getting the ball over the net allows them to make the first mistake. Similar to a bad serve receive, if you can’t serve well, you won’t be successful on the court. We narrowly won the first set on the backs of a positive serving and serve receive game and continued to play well into the second set, despite losing the second set. Despite our improved performance, we were still up against a good team. They took us down in the second set, but it was close once again. A good battle is a welcome change of pace for PSS, as we have been getting trounced every week by a far better team. That brings me to the second game…

Game 2 (Practice Safe Sets versus Notorious D.I.G.; lost 2 sets to none): If this name sounds familiar, it’s because they’re the team that we played last week. They are probably the strongest overall team we have played since I started playing UVic intramurals 6 years ago. This week, they even had a player they didn’t have the week before who was maybe their best player. This game was a mental challenge for us: we knew we had no chance to beat them so for us it was about keeping our composure and not getting frustrated with the fact that they knew they had us, and continued to press the issue. It was slightly embarrassing when they decided to run complex plays that involved faking attacks from one side of the court and then setting a completely different attacker, especially when they were up by a cool 12 points in the second set. At one point, I had to tell them to ease up when one of their bigger players smoked a ball into the face of one of our girls. The game was never in doubt and there was no need for them to keep crushing the ball like it was Match Point in the Olympics. At the same time, they played their first and second balls with next to no effort, which just threw more salt into the wounds when they would kill the third ball on a massive attack. It felt quite patronizing. While we want to be competitive and play some good volleyball, everyone has to realize that it’s intramurals; there aren’t any scouts watching.