The Patriots continued their streak of winning their pools in tournaments tonight, as the finished first in the National pool at the Quentin Road. After their second pool play game, it didn't look like the Patriots would even finish in the top half.
A mediocre effort was enough to dispatch Westchester 25-18 in the first game. But in that second game, Franklin Road Christian School was the opponent. Franklin Road is from Tennessee, and teams usually don't travel that far unless they think they have a good chance to win. The Patriots found out that Franklin Road was pretty good. The Patriots didn't have to make them feel as welcome as they did, however. Calumet/Calvary played perhaps their worst game of the year and fell, 25-16. Bad decision-making, bad passing, bad setting, bad serving and bad hitting characterized the Patriots' play (did I cover everything?).
Thankfully the next game was against probably the weakest team in their pool, and they won 25-11 (Faith started the game with four straight aces and Coach Carr was able to substitute liberally.) Next up was Southside, who earlier beat Franklin Road. The girls played well, putting pressure on Southside's suspect defense by pushing the ball deep, and pulled out a 25-22 win.
After the tournament rally, Arthur was the next opponent. Arthur's record was not great, but they played a style that was tough for us - lot of middle hitting. Calumet overcame that and came out with a 25-21 win.
Schaumburg was up next. Schaumburg was another one of those teams that was playing better than their record. They played a style that Calumet seems to play well against - scrappy defense. Calumet coasted to a relatively easy 25-15 win.
Freedom Farm was the seventh opponent. FF was like Schaumburg, only with better hitting. Calumet took a 25-17 victory in that game. Which brings us to the last game of the night.
The opponent was Ridgewood, who we had beaten twice already this year. Ridgewood had gone through the entire pool play without a loss. Calumet was entering the last game with one loss, while Franklin Road and Southside had finished with two losses each. We were told that if we lost, we would lose all tie breakers and finish fourth in the pool. If we win, we finish first in our pool - same number of losses as Ridgewood, but winning head-to-head so we win. We didn't know what to expect, as we had watched some of Ridgewood's play, and they looked really good.
The game was close until it was eleven to eleven. Then, after we got the serve back, Jessi Stas ripped off nine straight serves, including a couple of aces. All of a sudden it was 21-11. Ridgewood rallied a bit, tightening up the score to 22-15 and then 24-19, but the Patriots got that last point for a 25-19 win and first place in the pool.
Tomorrow we start bracket play at 10:30 against the winner of one of the two play-in games between the two bottom teams of each pool.
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