Patriots take fourth

It's been a long couple of days of volleyball. A couple of moderately successful days, as the Calvary Christian/Calumet Baptist Patriots took fourth place in the inaugural Christian Liberty Academy Varsity Invitational Volleyball Tournament, or the CLAVIVT, as we will call it.

The Patriots kicked off their participation in the tournament Friday with a pool play match against Rockford Christian Life. We didn't know anything about them, and after the first eleven points, we thought they might be a pushover. It was 10-1, Patriots. But then the Eagles got warmed up and stormed back. The Patriots managed to hang on for a 21-19 win. The Eagles maintained the momentum gained in the latter half of the first game and beat our girls rather easily, 21-11. After a short rest, the girls took on Elgin Academy. Elgin showed up with only five players, so Christian Liberty shared two of their JV players with them. This didn't seem to help much. The Patriots won in a near whitewash, 21-1. The second game saw several substitutions, and the girls took the second, 21-9. The third pool set was against a slightly better opponent, Mooseheart High. The girls played well and won 21-7, 21-11. Next up was Faith Christian from Dixon, IL. This team looked great last year losing in the finals of the Quentin Road tournament. They had many of the same girls back and we weren't sure what would happen. What happened was great play, controversy, inadvertant buzzers, and one very upset coach. The first game was very close, but the girls fell behind 19-15. But, not really. The scorer found that Faith had served out of rotation for three points. After a long delay where both coaches, the ref, and the scorer tried to figure out how this should be resolved, the ref finally decided that Faith should lose the three points and Cal/Cal should be awarded the serve. Let's just say that the Faith coach strenuously disagreed with that ruling. Anyway, that's what was decided, and the Patriots used it to eke out a 22-20 victory. The second game was also closely competed. Our girls had made a run and trailed by one point. Faith called a timeout. Following the timeout, Faith R. (our Faith, not the opponent), dinked the ball. As it crossed the net and began to fall to an unguarded part of the opponent's court, the score table buzzer went off because the scorer forgot to turn off the clock for the timeout. The ref called a replay and the girls went on to lose the point. Faith went on to win that game, 21-19. There was one more pool play match against a team that Cal/Cal should be able to easily handle, but there seemed to be a letdown after the big game after the draining Faith game. The final of the first game was 21-16, Cal/Cal. The girls got it together for the second and won 21-6.

I will recap Saturday's festivities later.