If there are any basketball people following this blog...

I'm letting you know that I've set up a separate blog for the HSRC sports programs. The web address is http://www.hsrcpatriots.blogspot.com.

I promised one more post, so here it is.

I won't go over the banquet very thoroughly, but I will say it was nice, as usual, and Coach Carr cried, as usual.

In case you didn't know, Jessi Stas and Faith Rohn were named to the all-tournament team at NACA. They don't give all the different awards that they used to, just offensive and defensive MVP. We didn't get either of them. Here's a link to the website (you'll have to cut and past into your address bar): http://nacasports.com/assets/Uploads/2009%20Volleyball%20Tournament.pdf

I put together a grid of where some of the player finished in various stat categories, both in the region per the NWI Times and the state, per Maxpreps. Here is the link to the document:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AhSbYCLoD5vTdDNHVnhvOGhJNGNqUkhHX29iS0JINWc&hl=en

Here is a link to the NWI Times volleyball stat leaders: http://www2.nwitimes.com/varsity/?sport_id=6&show=leaders


Hoping that all the girls' offseason pursuits increase their skills for next year. Best wishes to the club teams of Taylor, Faith, Ally and anyone else playing club. As I mentioned earlier, I will still be around in some capacities next year, so if I don't see you sooner, I'll see you next season.

Now, it's on to basketball. First games tomorrow. Should be.........interesting

Congrats to Rachel Eizenga!

Congrats to Rachel Eizenga, who was named AVCA/Maxpreps Player of the Week in Indiana for the week ended November 2. Here's the email I received:


AVCA High School Player of the Week - Indiana

Player of the Week of November 2

Rachel Eizenga

Calvary Christian High School (Highland): 40-3

5’8, Junior, Setter

Week of October 25 – November 1, 2009: 11 Games Played

Stats

Assists: 77

Ast./Game: 7

Kills: 14

Digs: 11

Aces: 9

Blocks: 2.5

The MaxPreps/AVCA High School Player of the Week Program is a partnership between the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) and CBS MaxPreps, Inc. Each week MaxPreps and the AVCA recognize deserving student-athletes at the high school level who have demonstrated outstanding play on the court throughout the week of competition.

Statistics entered at MaxPreps.com by the high school coach are used to determine the week’s winner.

Winners receive a certificate and a letterman’s patch from MaxPreps and the AVCA.

The winners of the AVCA Player of the Week Award are recognized on the largest high school sports website in country, MaxPreps.com. Find complete high school volleyball coverage at:
http://www.maxpreps.com/national/volleyball.htm

Players who receive the award will also receive a virtual patch on their player profile on MaxPreps.com – recognizing them as one of the elite players to receive this prestigious award.

Previous Players of the Week

Fawn Ryan
Batesville High School (Batesville): 28-3
Junior, Outside Hitter/Setter
Week of October 18 – October 25, 2009: 8 Games Played
Stats
Kills: 30
Kills/Game: 3.75
Assists: 5
Ast./Game: 0.625
Digs: 25
Aces: 9
Blocks: 6

Allyson Morey
Muncie Burris (Muncie): 33-0
5’8, Senior, Setter
Week of October 11 – October 18, 2009: 9 Games Played
Stats
Assists: 97
Ast./Game: 10.778
Kills: 6 Digs: 27
Digs/Game: 3
Aces: 3

Lesley Wilzbacher
Evansville Central High School (Evansville): 16-10
5’8, Junior, Setter
Week of October 4 – October 11, 2009: 7 Games Played
Stats
Assists: 67
Ast./Game: 9.571
Digs: 34
Digs/Game: 4.857
Kills: 3
Aces: 1
Blocks: 1

Lexie Pawlik
Penn High School (Mishawaka): 22-3
6’1, Junior, Setter
Week of September 27 – October 4, 2009: 11 Games Played
Stats
Team Hit %: 33.7
Assists: 129
Ast./Game: 11.727
Digs: 33
Digs/Game: 3
Aces: 16
Blocks: 2.5

Double sadness

What a difference a day (or two) makes. After the Patriots looked so good on Wednesday and Thursday, expectations were quite high for Friday. The first team up on Friday morning was Hearts for Jesus. As you have read, our finest game of the year was the two pool sets against Hearts in pool play. Hearts has a very good team, but the girls should have had confidence going into this one, as they had beaten them so soundly just two days before.

This game was at 9:30 at Wolf Creek Baptist Church. This was bad for many reasons. First, the time. Regardless of how long we had been down there, it still was 8:30 Central time. Calumet is NOT a morning team. In addition, the gym had no scoreboard, little room between the courts and the bare walls, tile floors, and was twenty miles away from the camp. That's the physical problems. There also were competition problems. First, we were flat. Second, the reffing was incomprehensible and one-sided. Before you accuse me of being biased, Coach Carr was told by a observer not from our cheering section that he had never seen such a game reffed so one-sidedly. Rachel was called for double hits three times early. She was not doing anything differently than she had done all year. After the third call, she stopped trying to overhand set and was just bumping it up. The refs (the up ref, especially) saw some brushing up against the net by Taylor and Rachel, but didn't see Hearts' big middle hitter raking the net twice on her follow through. After falling behind 14-4, the put together a little rally to pull with 16-9. But then another phantom brush of the net, this time by Jessi, was called, and the girls just fell apart. A defensive error, a ball dropping, two aces, a kill, yet another alleged setting error on Rachel, another defensive error and it was 24-9. After a serving error by Hearts, they dinked one for a kill and the set one disaster was history.

Set #2 looked like it going to be a repeat of set #1. A kill by Faith made it 1-1, but then two kills followed by another double call on Rachel made it 4-1, Hearts. Then, some signs of life. A Faith kill. A Hearts hitting error. An ace by Rachel. Now it was a game at 4-4. After a serving error, Kara got a kill and Taylor got a dink kill. The Patriots led 6-5. We fell behind again, 10-8, before a kill by Jessi and a couple by Taylor tied it back up again at 11. They got a dink kill before they made a hitting error. Back and forth it went. A Taylor kill tied it at 17. The momentum was broken by a hitting error, followed by two Hearts kills and then another hitting error. 21-17, Hearts. We scored two, but then, you guessed it, a double hit call on Rachel. Finally the ref noticed Hearts in the net, but then a kill and a block put Hearts on the doorstep, 24-20. It wasn't over yet. Two kills by Faith sandwiched around an ace by Rachel make it 24-23. Too little, too late. Hearts put down a kill and it was loser bracket for Calumet.

We soon found out our opponent was Broadfording, who we would play at the camp at 2:00 PM. Broadfording, who we split with in pool play and had defeated in the first game of bracket play. If we win the game, we play Hearts again for the championship (we would have to beat them twice). If we lost, it meant we were done with a third-place finish. The girls did play well. Faith struggled with her hitting, Broadfording blocked well, and our defense (serve-receive) was very poor. Calumet fell behind 13-6 because of this. We pulled to within five at 15-10, but then Broadfording began pounding the gifts given to them. More poor defensive play and a very bad call put the Patriots down 23-12. Rachel left her feet to pull a ball back that was overpassed, and a Broadfording girl reached over the net and blocked it. Instead of calling Broadfording for a an over-the-net violation, they called Rachel for a backrow attack. Anyway, Faith dinked one in but followed that with a serving error - 24-13, Broadfording. Rachel bumped one over that fell, Ally got an ace, Taylor blocked on, Ally got another ace and it was 24-17. Broadfording then hit one into the net, Jessi got a dink kill, and Broadfording hit two more into the net. 24-21 Broadfording. Kara got a kill. Could it be? Of course not. A very questionable double call on Rachel ended the game. How the ref could end the set on iffy judgment call was beyond all of us.

Set 2 was different. The girls fell behind early, but got back to within one at 9-8. They stayed there til it was 13-12. Broadfording pulled out a little bit til it was 18-15. Then a lift call (legit), kill, kill, ace, block and it was 23-15. Jessi got a kill, but then a net violation ended the tournament for Calumet. Game analysis: the defense was poor, leading to many easy kills for Broadfording.

Second sadness: now it's all over. I will do some statistical stuff later, but for now, I'm just thinking about what an experience for my girls and myself it has been to be part of the Calumet program. I also will expand on this, maybe after the banquet. It's been fun, I will miss having a daughter in it, but I'm not leaving it altogether. It's too much fun.

One down, two to go

This morning the Patriots faced Broadfording of Maryland again. Broadfording had finished fourth in the seeding, and had defeated Cornerstone in the first round earlier this morning. We had played and split with Broadfording yesterday morning. Broadfoarding had finished 4-4 in pool play, defeating Cornerstone twice, splitting with us and Crossroads, and losing twice to Community Christian.

Since their first round game went long, the girls had a lot of time to warm up waiting for them (they played in a different location). So they didn't have their usual early-morning lethargy. They came out smoking, with aces, big hits by Faith and all-around good play. The lead got as big as 21-8 before the you-know-what, but the girls finally finished it after giving fifteen to Broadfording.

The second game was different. We started out a little too loose, and Broadfording really turned up the heat with spikes. Faith also was pounding it, but we were making service errors (four of their first eleven points were from that). We also passed poorly and kept popping it back over the net for them to kill it. From 9-6 to 17-12, we trailed by three to five points. Finally at 17-12, Faith got a nice block. She followed that with two kills, Broadfording served into the net, and Rachel put in an ace. But from there, we broke down again, with a Kara hitting error, a couple of kills by BF set up by poor passing on our part. This was halted by a dink kill by Faith, but then they got another kill, an ace (perfectly placed), and after a hitting error, finished the girls off with a couple of dinks to win 25-19.

The third game started out great. Taylor dinked it and got an ace sandwiched around a hitting error by BF, and we led 3-0. But then they started killing it again. Faith tried to match them, but we kept making errors to offset that. At 9-9, Kara got a big block, they made a hitting error, Jessi and Taylor got kills, and then after a kill by BF, Taylor bumped one over that surprised them and fell, and Faith made a nice hit to finish them off.

Hearts for Jesus awaits us tomorrow at 9:30. We played the game of the season against them yesterday to defeat them 25-16 and 25-19, so they should be ready for us. If we win, we will play the winner of the loser's bracket in this double elimination tournament for the championship. If we lose, we have to win two games, on in the loser's bracket and one in the championship game to win it all.

I guess we belong in Division I

Very quick update before I go to bed: Pool play today consisted of two-set games against four of the five other teams in our division. We started with a split with Broadfording, which should have been a sweep except for the LGFS in game 1, turning a 23-19 advantage into a 25-24 loss. Our second game was against Crossorads of NC, and we swept and swept easily 25-12, 25-16, with a lot of sub play in the second game. Third was against Hearts for Jesus, a team that had defeated the team twice that defeated us in the finals of the PA tourney. We played our best game of the year and swept them, 25-16, 25-19. Faith was awesome in these games, and everyone else played great. To finish up, we played Cornerstone, another top team. We smoked them in the first game, 25-12, but lost the second 25-20.

Following the completion of pool play, the standings were as follows: Calumet, 6-2; Community Christian of OK (the one team we didn't play), 5-3; Hearts for Jesus of OH, 4-4; Cornerstone of FL, 4-4; Broadfording of MD, 4-4; and Crossroads of NC, 1-7. The three 4-4 teams are listed in the order they finished in the seeding. (The rules for teams with the same records were first, head-to-head; second total points given up.) The teams, except for Crossroads, are very evenly matched. Bracket results might be completely different than the seeding. What we do know is that we play tomorrow at 10:30 against the winner of Cornerstone and Broadfording.

See the pattern?

You don't get a blog entry after a disappointing loss, at least for a few days. That's the pattern.

Anyway, here on the eve of the final final national tournament, NACA, I am going to give you a few observations of the second day of the NCSAA nationals.

First of all, the tournament was a little better run than last year. Improvements: The refs were far better. Good devotional/call to service to kick off the tournament. The girls weren't harmed by the filthy dorms (because they didn't stay there). The only other game going on during the championship game was the third place game. The final was in the evening. Negatives: Still no all-tournament team. Championship team only gets a banner. Weird pool set up to seed the bracket play. Unbalanced pools. Weird brackets in that the second place team (us) didn't get a bye but the fourth seed did (which turned out not to be too bad of a thing for us, because we got to play another game). Dorms still filthy and bad (heard this from other teams that were there for the first time). Not enough play - too few teams. Too many weak teams. Overall impression: they are moving in the right direction.

And now for our play. We were able to play three games because of the weird bracket; the downside was that the first two games were against teams we played the day before - first MCAC. We beat them easily the day before; we beath them easily again, 25-13, 25-9. I'm not going to go into any detail about this game; MCAC is a young team and a young program and is not in our class.

The second game was against Covenant Classical, who we had split with in pool play. It was more a classic Calumet performance this day, even down to a pair of LGFSs (late game flat spots). Game 1 started with hits by several players and a lot of aces by Faith, who broke out the jump serve, and the girls led 24-10. The the LGFS, and Covenant scored eight straight. Finally Calumet closed it out for a 25-18 win. The second game was similar - same assorted kills, same Faith aces, and soon it was 22-11. Then the you-know-what, and the girls kind of stumbled to another 25-18 win.

Christian Community awaited us for the final. They were pretty much the same team that rolled through this tournament last year. No one had gotten close to them this weekend. In game one, the girls had their usual fast start. Christian Community made a few hitting errors, we got some kills and the girls had leads of 12-7, 14-11, and 16-13. Chr. Comm. then pulled even at 16 and from that point on, no one had a lead of more than two points. After a hitting error, CC led 24-23 and could have closed us out. But they made two consecutive errors and we were within one of winning. A stuff block brought them back even, then they got a kill to get within one of winning. Then, of all things, a serving error. But they followed this us with a kill. 27-26, CC. Faith then rode to the rescue - big kill, then a block, then another kill, this one down the line, to give the Patriots a 29-27 win.

Game 2 saw a lot more hitting by Calumet, especially early. Jessi put one down to give our girls a 12-9 lead. CC kill, kill, block, Calumet hitting error, Calumet hitting error and all of a sudden it was 14-12, CC. Kills by CC and errors by the Patoriots enabled CC to pull ahead and win, 25-20.

Game 3, oh boy. Calumet had a 16-10 lead at one point. Our girls were hitting the ball like crazy and it looked really good. Starting there we had MGCS (middle game comatose spot). Before the finally served the ball into the net, they ran off thirteen straight points. After they finally broke the streak, Taylor had a kill for our last point, and CC took game three, 25-18.

Game 4 was anticlimactic. The girls stayed close up until 16-13, but then it became a CC killfest. CC outscored Calumet 9-2 from that point on and won game 4 and the match.

Now we are at NACA. The competition looks fierce. We start tomorrow at 9 central time against a state champion, undefeated team from Maryland. I am excited.

Perfect pool play record is no more

Calumet's perfect record in pool play in tournaments in 2009 ended tonight with an opening set loss to Covenant Classical in the third pool play match this afternoon. We were told by the tournament organizer that they would be our toughest competition in our pool, and he was correct. However, we could have played better and won that game.

Covenant's game was marked by solid blocking. Their defense was good and their hitting was good, but the blocking was very good. And then we played like we were surprised that anyone would block any of our hits, in the first game, especially. They also played nearly error free volleyball in that game. We did jump out to a 7-3 lead in that game with a little blocking of our own and nice hits by Faith and Jessi. Then they began to dink us and they also get those blocks going, and all of a sudden they were leading, 12-10. Taylor then got two straight hits and then a dink kill to put us back ahead. Some errors by our girls and two blocks by Covenant Classical put them back in front, 16-14. And then it was back and forth until it was tied at 22. Covenant got two on errors, then after a kill by taylor to make it 24-23, Ally mishhit her serve, giving game one to Covenant, 25-23

Game two picked up where game left off. Mainly because of our errors and their blcoking, they took the lead at 8-5. A block by Kara and a kill by Taylor got Calumet going, as they went on a 12-1 run to go up 17-9. They increased in a little more as the game wore on, and appropriatley finished with an ace by Ally and the Patriots had game two 25-15. This was important, as head to head point scores would determine who finished first in our pool.

I'm not going to go into much detail about the later game against Redeemer. Suffice it to say, we didn't play well in game one and only won 25-20. Game two was a little different, as Calumet led 10-2 at one point and 21-9. From there each team scored four, and the final was 25-15.

As of this writing, we don't know who we play. I'll let you know as soon as I do.

Quick update

We are through two pool play game, and so far, so good. The first was against Faith Community Elite of Ohio, which we believe is a homeschool team. They weren't bad, and we were slow on defense and just not into it. Even so, we came out with a 25-18, 25-19 win.

Second game was against MCAC, a team we had beaten easily early in the season. This time was no different. Although MCAC looked to be a little better than they were earlier this year, they had just played a tough match against another pool team and were a little tired. We won the first 25-6 (really 24-7, because we got a point we shouldn't have.) The second was just a bit tougher, as both teams played better, but Calumet got the victory 25-11.

What appears to be the two toughest teams in our pool are coming up. We're enjoying a little lunch and "homework" time right now before we play again at 4 (3 Central time).

I will try to update again tonight.

Signing off, Mrs. Ross (ask the girls about that one).

OK, I think I'm over it enough now to post

No, no, I'm not. Sorry.


Just kidding.


It has been four days since we traveled down to Lafayette for the thirty-seventh time in the last two weekends, this time to finally take on Faith Christian for the state championship. Faith, who had given us our only loss of the season to date. Faith, against who we wanted to correct that one black mark on our season record. Faith, our nemesis.

It was not to be.

Again, we were wondering what went wrong after the fourth set of the game, a fourth set that went to 31-29 before we went down, and lost the match three games to one. Again, the girls defeated Faith in the first game and dropped the next three. Well, where shall I start.

Oh, yes, the first game. Last time the girls rolled to a 24-11 lead before giving up a few point, and then finishing off Faith 25-16. This time the girls fell behind 4-0 before they got their first point, on a hitting error by FCS. That started a little run for the Patriots helped by a couple of aces by Taylor and a hit by Faith, and Calumet took a 6-4 lead. From that point until an ace by Jessi gave the girls a 19-16 lead, no team led by more than two. But from here, Calumet maintained a three or four point lead until 23-20, when FCS made two errors to give the Patriots the game one victory.

Game two started the same way. Before we knew it, the score was 3-0, FCS. But there was no Calumet run this time. FCS kept up the pressure, we make a couple of hitting errors and quickly it was 10-3, FCS. Calumet made a little run to get within five at 13-8, but the rally fizzled as FCS kept finding the holes with their dinks and wiped out the Patriots, 25-15. One strange (or telling) stat from this set was we had one kill the entire set.

We improved our start in game three, as we only fell behind by two before we got our first point. We stayed close to FCS the entire game, with a Jessi kill bringing us to within two at 18-16. FCS put one down, a couple of defensive errors, and a kill dink pushed FCS's lead out to six, and FCS came out with a 25-18 game three win.

The start in game four was again weak for our girls. This time they were down 4-0 before a service error by FCS gave us our first point. The girls got a couple more before FCS pushed it back out to a four point lead at 8-4. FCS maintained that until it was 15-11, and then Calumet came back with five straight points to go ahead, triggered by a Jessi kill. The girls fell behind by three again at 22-19, then got a kill from Taylor, a hitting error by FCS and an ace by Ally to tie it up. FCS then scored the next two and were one point away from closing out the set, game and state championship, leading 24-22. Jessi stepped up for us here, with two kill dinks. From there it was one point for FCS, one point for Calumet. Taylor's kill tied it up at 29 before FCS got a kill, then another point (I was so upset I didn't record nor do I remember how the last point was scored) to beat us again and to take the state championship.

Arggh.

A quick summary of Tuesday's game against Goshen:
Goshen played much better than they did against us in the state semis, but it wasn't enough to even take a game, as Calumet defeated them for the third time this season, 25-17, 25-16, 25-20. Faith was really on Tuesday night, with nine spike kills and a couple of dink kills to go with her three aces. While the score in the first game was close for a while, even tied at 16, the game was really never in doubt as the girls scored nine of the last ten to get the win. Game two was the same except that the last tie was at 13. The girls took hold of the game from that point to win by nine. In game three, the Patriots led 16-9 and 21-12 before a little LGFS (look up the acronym in an earlier post) made it a 21-18 game. Calumet scored three in a row before Goshen got their last two. Then an Ally back-row kill ended the night.

Anyway, we have an opportunity to beat another team that handled us pretty easily last year here at Pennsylvanian, Christian Community from Ohio. We won't face them until Friday; until then, we have some unknown teams in our pool plus the MCAC Wildcats, who we played earlier this year. I'll try to update during the day; otherwise I will write something tomorrow night.

The preliminaries are over; time for the big event

All the formalities required to get to this point have been completed. It's time for the main event.

Calumet vs. Faith.

The game we all knew was inevitable is now upon us. Last night in Lafayette, the Patriots quickly dispatched the Goshen Blue Blazers, 25-6, 25-8, 25-18, after which the Eagles of Faith Christian even more quickly ended the season of Horizon Christian, 25-10, 25-10, 25-5.

As you all know, we faced Goshen in the championship game of our tournament about a month ago (a month already!), and the game was, while not really close, entertaining and well-played, and won by Calumet 25-16, 25-17. We had watched a little of Goshen's win over Clinton the previous week, and they looked pretty good while winning in four. So we figured on a good game for the semifinals. Well, it wasn't a good game.

The first set began with great hitting. Jessi set the tone with a big hit to begin the game, which was followed by an ace by Taylor. Then a kill by Faith, a nice block by Jessi, a kill by Jessi, a power dink by Jessi - it was the Jessi Show for a bit - and another ace by Taylor before she served one into the net. 7-1, Calumet. After some point exchanges which included a couple of kills by Goshen's eighth-grade star, Faith began serving. And serving and serving. Her jump-serves completely befuddled Goshen as she served eleven straight points, including six aces. The girls gave up a couple of points before finishing the set.

The second was similar to the first, except the stellar serving streak was by Jessi, and it came earlier in the game. At 2-1, Calumet, Jessi began serving and served until it was 14-1. She had five aces in that stretch, and was helped along with four kills by Faith. A few points later it was 17-3 when Goshen took a timeout. That seemed to settle them a little, and they kept the deficit steady to 21-7. But Calumet outscored them 4-1, with a kill by Kara finishing the set.

The third set seemed like it was going to go like the first two, even though Coach Carr had moved people around and changed a starter. First Taylor got a couple of aces, and then Rachel did, and pretty quickly it was 8-2. Then a little streak of poor defense afflicted the Patriots, and Goshen got to withing 12-9. The girls righted the ship for a bit, though, and stretched out the lead to 19-13. A block and a defensive error gave Goshen a couple of points, Calument got those back, then Goshen put one down and served an ace but followed that up with a service error. Taylor got a kill to make it 23-17, but a service error of our own followed. Finally, Kara got a dink kill and Emily fittingly ended the game with an ace.

We then ran out to grab a bite before returning to watch the anticpated annihilation of Horizon by Faith. But when we walked in, it was 7-7. Hmmm, what's going on here. But soon the earth returned to its axis and Faith began establishing its dominance. From that point Faith outscored Horizon 18-3 to win 25-10. The second game went like the first, with Faith starting a little slow, but then imposing it superiority bit by bit to win the second by the same score. Horizon was done for the third game and Faith rolled 25-5. Faith is a very precise, methodical team. They don't get flustered and they play very evenly. They're not prone to emotional streaks; they just play their game and wear down the opponent.

Today's game should be fantastic. We're a different team than when we barely lost to Faith five weeks ago. Everyone come on out and make some noise. We haven't had to do that for a while.

Lots of people, little noise

The irresistible force continued on tonight, defeating the Southside Torchpersons (a little political correctness for you) in three straight, 25-6, 25-12, 25-23.

This was a workperson-like effort (PC spasm again) in that the girls didn't show much fire for this game - in fact, the most fire was for Tina getting a kill in the third game. But the girls did play well. They established their dominance in the first game. This one wasn't one of those games where the girls jumped out to huge lead and then lost interest at the end of the game. This was a good, focused effort from the beginning to end. Most of our point were on kills rather than errors by the opponent, so it was a little more entertaining than some of their other blowouts this season.

The second game was more like the ones the girls have played against inferior opponents. Also, Coach Carr subbed a little more this game, and Jessica Neely was called up from JV to play. Anyway, the girls committed more errors in this game, and also Southside got more good passes to the setter which led to more kills. Also, their middle hitter started blocking, and Calumet couldn't pull away early. After a Southside ace and a hitting error by Taylor, the score was 15-12, Calumet. But then the Patriots ran off ten straight points, mainly behind the serving of Taylor, the girls had game two. Taylor broke out the jump serve to finish things off, and she had three straight aces to end the set.

Then Coach really got creative with the lineup, with Tina playing all the way around and Jessica getting playing time. Calumet fell behind early, 6-2, and stayed about that far behind for a considerable part of the game. The girls were down 15-10 and 16-12 before they started their comeback. Kills by Kara and an ace by Rachel contributed to the girls going ahead 19-18. Then Jessi Stas started pounding the ball but so did Southside's middle hitter. We also had some hitting errors, so the score remained close. But at 23-22 Southside, Faith put one down, Tina scored on a non-returnable downball, and Southside hit it into the net to complete the game.

Recognition of the seniors followed, of which there were about 112. OK, that was a little exaggeration. Rev. Broadbent handled the emcee duties for these festivities - thank you, pastor. Then the junior high and JVB team played Victory's teams to close out the night.

State semifinals on Friday night against Goshen Blue Blazers in Lafayette at 6:30 EDT, 5:30 our time. If we win, we play for the state championship on Saturday. Come on out and make some noise.

ICSTS Follies

The fun continues.

The weekend in Lafayette began with Mr. Meyers, czar of the ICSTS, pointedly ignoring Coach Carr and our team when we arrived for the exercise in futility that the first game was, which set the tone for the whole weekend. Then, Coach Carr was greeted by a smiling Mrs. Meyers, who asked if we had our scorekeeper, as required from the higher seed. Yes, we had, she responded (me). Then she asked if we had line judges, also as required. No, said Coach. The smile disappeared. Why not? Coach Carr calmly explained that we were assured that we would not have to play on Friday night, so we had games scheduled for the night. Games that our JV had to play since now our varsity had to play here. So all our potential line judges were busy. Playing a game our varsity was supposed to play. Mrs. Meyers was not happy. She was quite cold to us the rest of the weekend.

So, Saturday we got there a little early, so after watching the Goshen-Clinton game for a while Coach Casey, Coach Carr and I wandered over to the other gym to see what we thought we would be the Horizon (4th seed) and Lighthouse (5th seed). As we walked in, we found out that Horizon had won two and the teams were in their fourth game. So apparently the other team had won one. We settled into our seats and took a look at Horizon's opponent. GCS was on their jerseys. GCS? Lighthouse? I took a look at the brackets and realized that the 12th seed had "upset" Lighthouse, the fifth seed. Who was the 12th seed? Why, it was Granger Christian.

Horizon played Granger to get to the semifinals.

Our JV team always plays Granger's varsity and regularly beats them. I mean, we don't even send our varsity to play Granger because it's too one-sided.

I will need a lot convincing that Mr. Meyers didn't arrange the seeding to get his below-average team into the semifinals. Deserving teams like Clinton and Heritage are done, while Horizon - Horizon who lost to Covenant in three straight after Covenant lost to Heritage in three straight - is still playing while Heritage's season is over. Horizon who needed four games to defeat Granger, is still playing while Clinton's seniors won't get to play high school volleyball again. I'm sorry but if Horizon played ten games against us, Faith, Heritage, Clinton or Goshen, they would lose ten times. It isn't right or fair.

What a lesson these girls are learning.

So now Faith gets to play the cupcake, guaranteeing their spot in the finals while we have to go through Heritage and Goshen to get there. What, we don't have to beat Clinton too? How did they let that happen?

One final thing: Faith gets to choose what semifinal time slot they want - either 6:10 or 8:45 EDT, because they are the top seeded team. So we don't even know what time we play on Friday yet. EDIT: We are playing at 6:10, 5:10 our time.

Apparently at least one coach is starting to see things as we do. However, we'll need a few more to change the way things are set up. Many coaches don't understand what's going on or don't care. But if this kind of thinly-veiled abuse of power continues, more teams are going to be burned. And then hopefully enough teams will say enough is enough.

Trifecta

Tonight the girls traveled down to Lafayette AGAIN, this time to play Heritage in the quarterfinals of the state tournament, or the regional finals, however you want to look at it. Yes, to Lafayette to play a school that's about five miles away from our home court.

The girls had played Heritage twice earlier in the season, defeating them in tightly contested games both times. The first time was a regular season game in which Calumet won in three straight, with the first and third games being quite close. The second time was in the semifinals of our tournament. That game saw the Defenders win the second game before succumbing in the third. So we were ready for a competitive game.

Except someone forgot to tell Heritage. At least in the first set. After a Taylor kill to get the serve, Taylor ran off eleven consecutive points to make it 12-0. Taylor lost the serve after a timeout, but Calumet maintained a ten-point or better lead through the end of the game before scoring five of the last six points to defeate Heritage 25-9 in game 1.

The second game was more competitive, especially after Heritage discovered the double block. The second stuff block for Heritage brought them to within two at 16-14, but then Faith put one between the blocks, Taylor blocked one of theirs, they dinked one out, Kara got a kill, a Heritage hitting error, another kill by Kara and a kill by Taylor gave the Patriots a 23-14. At this point the team performed their usual generosity by giving Heritage four points before closing it out with a kill by Taylor and a Heritage hitting error.

The third game kind of started like the first, in that Calumet jumped out to an early 10-3 lead, with three kills from Faith and two from Kara. Heritage then had a mini-run to close to within four. From there the Patriots slowly pulled farther and farther ahead, with some hitting by Faith and a lot of error commited by Heritage. The score eventually reached 24-15, before the LGFS occurred (late-game flat spot). Heritage ran off seven straight points before final getting the winner on a block by Emily Eizenga.

Tomorrow I give my impressions of the first weekend at the tournament.

Perfunctory

per⋅func⋅to⋅ry  /pərˈfʌŋktəri/ [per-fuhngk-tuh-ree]
–adjective 1. performed merely as a routine duty; hasty and superficial: perfunctory courtesy.
2. lacking interest, care, or enthusiasm; indifferent or apathetic.

Yep, that pretty much sums up tonights waste of ti.. er game.

The mess also known as the ICSTS tournament began tonight, with a lovely trip to Lafayette to play a group of students from Providence Cristo Rey that I hesitate to call a team. Yikes. If the girls weren't totally disinterested, it might have been three shutouts. As it was, the girls won 25-8, 25-4, 25-4. This was pointless for both teams. (A frightening aspect: Providence Cristo Rey beat another team to get to play us.) Total playing time: about 40 minutes. Travel time to and from Lafayette: about 180 minutes.

And we get to go back again tomorrow, this time probably against Heritage. Heritage is one of three teams to win a set from us all year, so this game should be good.

NOTE: I began a blog entry a couple weeks ago, but didn't finish it until yesterday. However, it still posted with the original date. Scroll down to the September 30 entry if you want to read it. It's some more of my thoughts about the ICSTS.

Double post

Lots of activity over the last couple of days. First, on Monday, the team scrimmaged against the Prairie State College team. Stephanie Carlson, former Calumet player, is now a key player on the Prairie State team, so through her the scrimmage was arranged. The Prairie State team was just returning from a successful trip to Rhode Island, winning all their games there, to give them a season record of 25-6.

The game started out close, sort of like each team was getting an idea about how the other team played. Then Prairie State started imposing their dominance. They had one tall athletic girl who could pound the ball. They also had a very gifted setter. Once they got a few points going, some of our girls started tightening up a little, and the lead increased quickly. Prairie State ended up with a 25-13 win.

The second game went a little better for the girls, but Prairie State continued to demonstrate that they were a college team and our girls were not. Faith was all over the court, doing her best to keep them in it, but troubles with serve receiving among other errors kept the Patriots from making a game of it, and they lost 25-15.

Prairie State's coach sat down three of his starters for the third game. By that time most of the nervousness had worn off for Calumet, and this game was very competitive. The game was close throughout, but Calumet scored the last two points to pull out a 25-22 win.

For the games that actually counted, Calumet traveled up to Schaumburg to play both Schaumburg Christian and Quentin Road at Schaumburg Christian's fantastic new fieldhouse. With the old gym, there could be at least five games going on at the same time. As it was, I think there were nine games played over three time slots, with JV, junior high and varsity games taking place. I will mention that the JV team defeated Quentin Road after losing twice to them earlier in the year. The junior high team struggled, losing their games against Schaumburg and Quentin Road. Now, on to the varsity.

I arrived late for the Schaumburg game. They were leading early in the second game. The parents that were there reported that the team had defeated Schaumburg in the first game 25-15. There wasn't much high-level play in the second game, but the girls did win the set 25-16.

Quentin Road was next up, immediately following the Schaumburg game. Earlier in the year, Calumet had traveled up to Quentin Road and defeated them 25-12, 25-13. The girls were playing at a high level in that game. Tonight, the girls didn't play at that level. The first game started out well. The Patriots jumped out to a 4-1 lead behind kills by Kara and Faith. But due mainly to Patriot errors, Quentin Road crept back in to the game, and eventually took the lead at 12-11. But from there, the girls outscored the Eagles 14-3, as Taylor got several kills, and then several aces. The game ended on an ace by Jessi.

The second game was not a good game for Calumet. This one went the opposite of the first one. Our girls played well early and led 12-5 at one point. After giving up three points, the girls matched it an led 15-8. Some back-and-forth scoring brought the score to 17-11. Things went south from here. Kill by QR. Hitting error. Another kill. Another hitting error. An ace. Faith broke the streak with a kill, but QR matched it. QR then committed a hitting error, but then scored on a dink. A hit by QR that went off our block. It went like this, no team scoring more than two in a row until the end. Our girls had two set points that they couldn't get, then Quentin Road had one but Calumet got a dink in. Finally QR hit one out and the girls escaped with a 29-27 win.

Next up is a first-round game in the state regionals against the winner of the 15th and 18th seeds on Friday. We should win that one easily, and then next after that should be Heritage, which would be the third time we will have faced them this season. That game will be at 5:10P CST at Faith Christian School in Lafayette. I will blog tomorrow about the wonderful format and seeding of the state tournament.

Champions again!

The Calumet Christian (yes, we're back to Calumet - I don't have to change the blog name!) Patriots defeated an old rival to win the Quentin Road/Dayspring Classic volleyball tournament yesterday, their second tournament victory of the year.

As you read, we went undefeated in our pool, finishing 8-0. The day wasn't without adventure, as you also read, with the late start we all got due to some miscommunication, and the wrong turn by Coach Carr's vehicle which caused her, Jessi Stas, Holly Schaap, and Tina Schnoor to completely miss the first set against Southside, and with some struggles against weaker teams. But the girls got the job done, which set the stage for Saturday's events.

We had already examined the bracket possibilities before the tournament started, and realized that we would face Saline, if we got there, in the semifinals. We were a little disappointed that we couldn't play them in the championship, but of course there was nothing we could do about that. We also speculated about Calvary of PA in the finals, but that turned out to be a wrong assumption.

In our first game, we played Westchester. They were in our pool and we had beaten them on Friday, 25-11, 25-14. We figured that this wouldn't be a tough game, and we were right. The girls played like they played in their first bracket game in the Calumet Invitational, like a machine. Even with a lot of substitutions in the second game, the girls rolled to a 25-4, 25-4 whitewash.

The second game was against Arthur. This was a little bit of a surprise for a couple of reasons. First, we figured Calvary of PA would win their pool, but they only finished 5-3 in pool play. So after Friday's play was over, we thought we would be playing them in the quarterfinals instead of the finals, like we might have if they won their pool. But Calvary lost to Arthur in the first round of the tournament.(Background information: Three years ago, the last year Calumet had a near-perfect team, we came up against Calvary in the finals of this tournament. Calvary had, that year, one of the best teams I've seen in the four years I have been watching most of the varsity games. Calvary beat us, I believe, 25-14, 25-16. We lost two other games the whole year, which I believe were a pool play game in Nationals against Fulton County and a late-season game against Quentin Road which had beaten easily earlier in the year. So we figured if Calvary was back, they must be really good. They weren't.) Arthur had one really good middle hitter, one good middle hitter, and then the rest of team. In game one, the girls established that they were the superior team, dominating the game 25-13. In the second game, the girls decided that this was the game in which they would lose focus. Due mostly to our errors, the girls found themselves trailing 13-9. After a little 4-2 run by Calumet, they were still trailing 15-13. Then, a kill by Faith. A block by Faith. A shanked pass by Arthur. Two consecutive aces by Rachel gave the Patriots a 18-15 lead. Then four errors by Calumet with a kill by Faith in the middle of it made it a 19-19 game. Then Taylor got a kill, Arthur made a error, an ace by Kara, a kill by Faith, a dink by Jessi and another ace by Kara gave the Patriots a 25-19 win.

As expected, Saline was up next in the semifinal. Same as the Patriots, Saline had not lost the whole tournament. For those of you not with the team last year, Saline is a very conservative team from Kentucky. They don't look like much, not at all like athletes, especially in their very long shorts and long socks, but they are very smart, very good defensively, and generally do not get flustered. They do have one girl, Sarah Mills, who is a very gifted and smart player. From what I could find on the Net, they didn't lose so much as a set last year except the one to us in the final last year. Coach noticed that Sarah did all the blocking, so she made sure to distributed the hitting across the front row.

The first game went as many do for the Patriots. They were somewhat even with Saline, but service and hitting errors kept our girls from getting a bigger lead. At 12-9, the errors were fewer, but the hitting, that the girls had been doing all game, continued. Two kills by Faith, two kills by Kara, and an ace by Jessi contributed to pushing the lead out to 18-11. Then the usual flat spot for the Patriots occurred, as Saline put down some dinks and down balls and pretty soon it was 20-16. From there it was back and forth, with Calumet making many errors between kills by Jessi and Ally, but at 22-19 the girls finished off Saline with a backrow kill by Ally, and ace by Jessi and a Saline hitting error.

The second game had the Patriots jumping out to 11-4 lead. Saline began to come back, helped a lot by errors by our girls, including a net violation and back row attack violation. It was 12-11, then 14-12. But then Jessi began a long streak of serving as Faith had several kills. Calumet scored nine straight points before a kill by Saline. Then a kill by Kara and an ace by Rachel put the Patriots into the finals.

The other semifinal was between Ridgewood and Freedom Farm. Some of the girls wanted Ridgewood; others wanted a new opponent so were cheering for Freedom Farm. Ridgewood ended up winning, beating Freedom Farm in three games. We had faced Ridgewood the weekend before, winning in three tough games. Ridgewood came out fired up to play us. Our girls came out flat. There were net violations, out of rotation violations, blocking errors, hitting errors and service errors. At one point, Ridgewood was up by six at 16-10. Ridgewood hit one into the net, Taylor put one down, Jessi got two kills and it was a two point game. But then the girls scored nine in a row, which included kills by Jessi and Faith, aces by Taylor and some hits out by Ridgewood. Ridgewood then got two on a dink by Faith that went out and a block, but Calumet got the next two with the last a kill by Faith to win game one, 25-20.

The second game began very even, with some good play by both teams. but at 11-11 the Patriots scored six in a row, mainly because of hitting errors by Ridgewood. After giving up a point, the girls then outscored Ridgewood 6-2 to give Calumet a commanding 23-14 lead. Ridgewood regrouped to score four straight before Calumet stopped the streak. At 24-18 Ridgewood called a timeout. Faith was serving. Because there was no room when there were two courts per gym, Faith hadn't jump served all day. She didn't jump serve at all during the final game to that point either, but she pulled it out for this point. And of course it was perfect and dropped in for an ace, giving Calumet the set, game and tournament championship.

After the trophies for first and second were handed out, the all-tournament team was announced. There are only six all-tournament slots at the Dayspring Classic. They announced them in reverse order of votes received. First announced was Beverly Black of Quentin Road, then Monica Schlabach of Pathway, our very own Jessi Stas, and Dominique Stegall of Ridgewood. The final player named was the MVP, and that announcement had very little to no suspense. Of course it was Faith Rohn, making it two-for-two for her in MVP tournament awards.

Tuesday is a trimatch against Schaumburg and Quentin Road at Schaumburg. Then the state regionals with their ridiculous schedule this weekend. I will post on that later this week.

Even shorter blog on pool play day at Quentin Road

It's late, I'm tired, so I'm not going to give you a lot.

We opened the day with only six players and no coach. One of the vehicles in the caravan made a wrong turn and went REALLY out of the way, so they were late. No matter - Coach Casey filled in admirably, and the girls did their job, with Ally playing Jessi Stas' position and putting down some kills. The girls beat Southside 25-17, 25-14.

Next up was East Moline. We hadn't faced them at least since before I was following the team. After making short work of them in the first set, 25-11, Coach began subbing liberally and the girls lost a little focus, but they won anyway, 25-18.

Coach Carr then left to go to a wedding. At 4 we took on Westchester, and traditionally a weak team. Again, there was a lot of substitutions. Still the girls won 25-11, 25-14.

With Kelsey coaching again, the Patriots played First Baptist of Danville for their last game of the day. The first game was a struggle, as FB played well and we played poorly. We did finally manage to capture the game, 25-21. The second game went more as expected with our girls making better play. The final was 25-12.

Tomorrow we take on the winner of two weak teams at 10:30 AM. Then the real fun will begin.

Congrats to Coach Car on your 400th career victory. That milestone was reached after Calvary won the second game, against East Moline.

Very short blog entry on FB of Mish

I know it's been a couple of days since the FB of Mishawaka game. I have been formulating a blog entry about the ICSTS (yes, I know I'm a broken record), but I've put that aside to give you a quick update before the big QR tournament this weekend.

The JH and JV started the evening with two easy wins over their FB of M counterparts preceding the varsity game. This was the first game after the loss of a key member of the team, so we weren't sure how things would go. The replacements were Holly in the front row and Tina in the back. The team played a little out of sorts the whole evening as the girls tried to get used to playing with new teammates, and the new players tried to get used to their new assignments. The first game was tied at 6, and the Patriots only led 13-10 at one point. Then Rachel began to serve ace after ace. Sprinkled in were a couple of nice hits and blocks, and the score was 21-10. The usual focus loss occurred, and FB outscored the Patriots 6-2 to pull FB within seven. The Patriots finally got the last two and won 25-16.

The second game was similar. Behind a lot of kills, the girls pulled out to a 19-9 lead. Again, the girls played indiffently with a big lead. There were hitting errors and serving errors and some poor defense, allowing FB to get within seven at 24-17. Finally a back row kill by Ally ended it.

The third was like the first two. The girls led 21-12 in this one before the usual flat spot occurred. FB scored three in a row; Calvary/Calumet got one. FB got another one before Cal/Cal got two to get within one of winning it, 24-16. This time FB scored three in a row before the girls got the final one to win it 25-19.

Quentin Road begins tomorrow at 10AM. I will see you there.

Calvary downs Ridgewood

Calvary played the Ridgewood Baptist Rams tonight at Calvary's home gym at Lake Hills Baptist. Ridgewood is a perennially strong team, and their record coming in, 13-3-1, indicated that this year was no exception. Their two big hitters from last year returned, Dominique Stegall and Christen Johnson, so we knew their offense would be strong.

After a slow start by the Patriots, Ridgewood made a few mistakes, Jessi S had a big hit, and Calvary gradually pulled ahead, 14-8. Then the girls' offense really kicked in. A hit by Faith. Another hit by Jessi. After giving up a point, Faith got another one. And another one. Then, a big block by Faith. Now it was 18-9. Calvary kept an eight- or nine-point lead until 22-14. Then the girls relaxed a bit and Ridgewood scored three. Taylor stopped their run with a kill, and Faith followed with two more to finish up a 25-17 first game.

The second game saw the Patriots fall behind 7-5 early on, but a rally which included a couple of kills by Jessi S sandwiched around a kill by Taylor, put the girls ahead 13-8. The five point lead was maintained until a block by Faith followed by ace by Taylor (leading ace server among all high schools in the northwest Indiana region) and a kill by Kara opened the lead up to 20-12. After an exchange of points, Ridgewood got a little run going and pulled to within 21-17. Another run by our girls put them ahead 24-18, but couldn't get the final point until they gave two to Ridgewood. Final score of game 2: 25-20.

Apparently there wasn't enough suspense in the first two games for the girls, because in the third game, Ridgewood took the lead at 3-2 and kept it. For a while, anyway. Due to some indifferent play by the Patriots and some good defense by Ridgewood, the Rams gradually widened the lead until it was 20-13. The Patriots ran off four straight points including a nice block by Kara, then gave up two. Calvary got those two back before Ridgewood scored again, making the score 23-20, Ridgewood. Faith then put one down, followed by Rachel, and after the Patriots got one more, it was tied at 23. Then it was back and forth. Ridgewood scored, then Calvary, then Ridgewood, then Calvary. At 25-all Faith had a big hit, then the Patriots closed it out on the next point, and sent home the Rams fans disappointed.

The varsity is now 22-1. Next Tuesday the girls are at First Baptist of Mishawaka. Then the Quentin Road tournament. If you can make it, be there. Especially be there for the second pool play game ;-)

Please let me run things

As promised...The ICSTS Rant!!

The ICSTS is at it again. I know, I should find something else to rant about, but the ICSTS gives me so much material. We got the brackets and schedule for the state tournament, and it is ridiculous.

The one thing they got right: Faith is seeded first and we are seeded second. And that is all they got right. First of all, let's start with how they treat the top seeds. After a couple of play-in games at 5:30, which will reduce the field to sixteen teams, the next round begins. There are two of the eight games of this round this Friday night. Guess what two teams play? You are getting good at this. That is correct, us and Faith. It's not a problem for Faith, it's at their place. But for us, we get to travel to Lafayette on Friday, play a very poor team at 6:45 and then go home (at least 1hr 35min away) and travel back to Lafayette again for a a 5:10 game. And this game we have to travel all this way for? Probably near the weakest team we've played all year.

The schedule is also brutal for the next weekend. The semifinals take place on Friday night, and the final isn't until late on Saturday. So, because we aren't going to sit around Lafayette all day waiting to play, we get to make four round trips to Lafayatte over two weekends (contingent on the girls winning). Coach tried to get them to change this ridiculous schedule, but they won't. They all have teams playing in the soccer tournament that's going on the second weekend, but why the volleyball teams have to suffer for this, I have no idea. We suspect there is still the misplaced concern of prior years, about the poor girls getting over tired due to too many games in too short of a time. Please.

Now for the thing that really bothers me. (You thought I was bothered already? I'm just getting started.) The seeding. I was excited when I heard that the teams were going to be seeded at the end of September, based on how the teams were doing to that point. Well, by that time we played many of the top teams in the ICSTS, and it was pretty obvious to us how the teams should slot: Faith first, us second, probably Heritage third, Goshen fourth, and Clinton fifth. This based on our narrow loss to Faith at their place, our defeats of Goshen, Clinton, and Heritage (twice), as well as some information on the play between the other teams. I don't know what Heritage did against any of these other teams, but they came the closest to beating us, so I would put them right behind us. The rest of the teams in the state I believed to be below this group, but I wasn't sure. Anyway, the seeding came out. Faith first, us second - so far so good. Clinton was third. Ok, a little head-scratching here. Clinton had split with Goshen, but had lost to Goshen in their most recent game. Advantage, Goshen. So Goshen should have been above Clinton. And having played Clinton, Goshen and Heritage, I think Heritage should have higher than both. So who is seeded fourth? Why, it's Horizon! Horizon, coached by the guy heading up the seeding. Well, I couldn't say for sure, but from looking at the scores of Horizon against teams that had played other teams that had played us, I didn't think this was right. Anyway, moving down the list, Lighthouse is seeded fifth. I did a little checking and strangely, Lighthouse had defeated Horizon this season. Twice. But they were seeded lower than Horizon. This is getting more and more suspicious. Continuing on, Goshen is seeded sixth and Heritage seventh. Which means Calumet, seeded second, would likely play Heritage in the quarterfinals, and the winner of Goshen and Clinton in the semis, just to get to Faith in the finals.

As I said, I couldn't speak authoritatively about the level of play of the downstate teams, namely Horizon and Lighthouse. But, then checking some schedules, I saw that Horizon was playing Covenant in Demotte on October 3. I just had to go, so I did. Kelsey and I made the 50 minute trip down there to watch Horizon take on a team that we beat 25-12, 25-10, 25-9. It didn't take long to have my suspicions confirmed. As I have mentioned, it's easy to see if a team can play offense in warmups, not so easy to see if they play defense. I watch Horizon warm up. They didn't have much offense. Ok, they probably have good defense. Then the game started. As I say, Horizon's offense wasn't much. Which was nice for their defense, because they didn't have to be alone in their badness. Covenant beat them in three straight games. From my observation, Horizon does not deserve to be even mentioned in the same sentence as the top five teams in the state, mentioned above.

One strange thing: Coach Carr is getting an indication that the brackets might be flip-flopped before the semis, which would mean we would play the Horizon/Lighthouse winner instead of the Goshen/Clinton winner. Which would be more fair for us, but why in the world wouldn't the seeding reflect this? I just don't get it, other that strongly suspecting the Horizon people made sure their team had the easiest possible route into the final four, and then either: 1) feeling guilty about the easy route Faith had to the finals, or 2) wanting to give Horizon an "easier" semifinal to give them a better chance to make it to the finals.

It's easy to criticize, not so easy to come up with solutions, so here are my solutions: First, I would have done more research on and weighted more heavily head-to-head play, or not having that, measured the strength of schedule a little better. I daresay I might be the only person that saw Faith, Heritage, Clinton, Goshen, Calumet and Horizon play this season, so my seeding comes from more knowledge than most. My seeding would be 1)Faith, 2)Calumet, 3)Heritage, 4)Goshen, 5)Clinton, 6)Lighthouse, 7)Horizon, 8)whoever - at this point, it's not relevant. But if it were up to me, I would go out and take a look a some of the other teams - I would have traveled out to the Trinity tournament, for example, where several of the middling teams in the ICSTS play. Another thing I might do is split the group into two divisions, based on level of play. This would solve a couple of problems. The best teams wouldn't have to go through the motions of winning the early rounds to get to the other good teams, and no one would have to deal with the death march of games on four days over two weekends.

Let's discuss the schedule. At both our tournament and the Dayspring (Quentin Road) the entire bracket of twenty-four and twenty teams, respectively, takes place in one day. Why can't the ICSTS compress this tournament, if not into one day, into two days? The answer is they can. I would at least eliminate the Friday night games and do everything on two consecutive Saturdays.

See? I can fix all the problems of this tournament. Now, if someone will just ask me to do it.

Three years (continued)

As I was saying as I dozed off yesterday, we faced Heritage in the semis. We had beaten them earlier this year 25-21, 25-16, 25-22. It was probably the toughest game we had all year except for the Faith game. They have one really tall girl who plays very good defense and hits from everywhere - not really hard, but when it's coming from everywhere, it can be hard to defense. Also, the rest of the team is very good defensively, and the team is very well coached - Heritage's defense seems to always to be very well placed.

The first game was as expected. After Calvary got the first two points, Heritage tied it up. Calvary then went out to a 5-3 lead; Heritage tied it up. Until Heritage went up 16-13, no team had a greater than two point lead. But of course Calvary tied it at 16. Heritage got three in a row to make it 19-16. From then on, however, things changed and it was all Calvary. Behind two kills by Jessi Stas, one by Faith and a couple of well placed dinks by Jessie Clark, the Patriots outscored Heritage 9-2 to close out the game, 25-21.

This seemed to light a fire under Heritage. They stormed out to a 7-1 lead, but Faith caught fire with three hits sandwiched around an ace by Rachel brought Calvary to within one. After Heritage scored three, Calvary went on a tear, outscoring Heritage 9-1 to take a 15-11 lead. Calvary still led by four at 17-13 when Heritage started pulling it together. It was 20-20 when Heritage scored three in a row. Calvary got one, Heritage got one, Calvary got two and then Heritage closed out the game, 25-23.

The third game was not like the first two. Calvary jumped out to a 5-2 lead behind kills by Faith, Jessi, and Kara. After a service error, Faith got another kill, Kara had a block to make it 7-3. The girls gave up another point before Faith got another kill. 8-4. Heritage got another point, but it was the last point they would score. Taylor got a kill. Ally served an ace. By the time Ally finished it off with another ace, Heritage looked completely demoralized. Calvary scored the last seven point to win the set 15-5 and the game, 2-1.

Now, it was Goshen, the team everyone was talking about all weekend. Well, one player on the team anyway. Azariah Stahl, superstar-in-the-making. Azariah Stahl, 5'11" with about a 30" vertical. Azariah Stahl, eight-grader. She is already a very, very good volleyball player, with the potential to be great. A couple of our girls had scouted her earlier in the tournament and were not intimidated. They noted that she made some mistakes, and her hits were not super-hard.

The first game against Goshen started out like the girls were a little intimidated. Goshen scored the first three points. But after a dink by Rachel started a little run by Calvary of four points. Thereafter a pattern was established, which seemed to carry through the rest of the set. When Stahl was in the front row and we were serving, Goshen would return the serve to somewhere near the setter. She would set it very, very high to Stahl. Very high because there was no need for deception. Everyone knew it was going to her. Very high so that if the set wasn't perfect, the hitter had time to adjust her approach. So everyone in the gym knew where it was going because of the set, and also because the ball always went to the same person. But it didn't matter. Stahl's point of contact on the ball was so high that either (1) the ball would go over any block attempt or (2) she could direct the ball around the block. So pretty much everytime the set was decent (and most were) Stahl would pound it. Which was OK. Why, you ask? Because then Goshen would serve it and then their weaknesses were exposed. Which were just about everything else besides setting and Stahl hitting. Calvary would set up a hit and it would go down. Then it would start over again. Stahl would work through the front row, getting her three kills or so, depending on if we made an error, and then she would be in the back row, when we would add to the lead. Goshen's defensive weakness were also evident in the amount of points the Patriots scored with aces and dinks. If the girls didn't have some other lapses, the winning margin would probably have been greater. However, finally at 16-16, the girls caught Stahl in the back row and, behind kills and dinks by Faith and aces by Rachel, ran off the final nine points of the game and won 25-16.

The second game was similar to the first, just that the run with Stahl in the back row occurred toward the middle of the game. The teams played evenly until it was 8-8. Jessi had a kill which triggered an 11-3 run. Then Stahl got back in the front row and we made some mistakes, and Goshen scored three to make it 19-14. Stahl then went back to the back row after a point, and Calvary took the second set, the game and the tournament championship 25-17. Three years later and the trophy is back where it belongs.

After a short break, the awards were handed out. The fourth place trophy went to the Fort Wayne Angels, a little bit of a surprise since they had not been a strong team in years past. Third place was won by Heritage; if the seeding was different, they probably would have been second. At least they gave us more trouble than Goshen did.
Individual awards were next. Second team: Katie Vander Kooi from Community, Lori Appleby from Heritage Hall, Staci Redlich from Southside, Cidney Dobrodt from MCAC, Ariana Bray from Schaumburg and Christen Johnson from Ridgewood. First team was our very own Jessi Stas, Melissa Mailand from Fort Wayne Angels, Moriah Randolph from Goshen, Savannah Atsma from WMCAA, Lauren Peterson from Ridgewood, Beverly Black from Quentin Road, and Danielle Zandstra from Heritage Christian. That left one more spot for the all tournament team and the MVP award. Azariah Stahl and Faith Rohn were the obvious two for these spots. Willie Carr paused dramatically before announcing the last of the first-team all tournament team... and it was Azariah Stahl. Faith Rohn had won the MVP.

And it was richly deserved.

Three years

It has been three years since Coach Carr made some early-game adjustments in the championship game against Faith of Lafayette to cover their dinks and Calvary (Calumet Baptist at that time) won their own 24-team tournament. Since then, Cal/Cal lost in the quarter finals (2007) and finished fourth (2008). Which would be OK for a lot of teams, but a lot of teams don't have the standards that Cal/Cal does. So three years has been kind of drought for us. But this year the expectations were high.

Per Coach Carr's instructions, I tried to give us a tougher pool that what I originally had set up. But as it turned out, there were three teams that were a cut above everyone else. There was a group of four or five after that, and then there were the rest. It turned out that three were in the yellow pool, two each were in red and green, and it was only us in our pool, not withstanding one pool play game that I will get to later.

Our first pool play game was against Crossroads, a homeschool team from the far western fringe of Chicagoland. We knew a little about the organization, having played them in girl's basketball and boy's volleyball. I also knew that they weren't very good, judging by their record. So of course our girls played like they often do, down to the level of their competition. After a so-so first game win, 21-11, the girls struggled to run their plays precisely and struggled to a 21-15 win. We hoped that this wouldn't be an indication of the play level for the weekend.

Next up was was Quentin Road, a victim of Calvary's earlier in the year. The first game was again so-so, and the girls won 21-14. In the second it seemed Quentin Road couldn't do anything right, and we picked it up a little. The result: a 21-4 drubbing of the Eagles. Next up was the Fort Wayne Falcons. We played a bit better, but the Falcons were a pretty weak team, so the scores of 21-9, 21-8 were somewhat misleading. We were getting an indication by this time that our pool was not that strong. The one team we moved into our pool that we believed would be strong, was only 3-3 at this point, including dropping one game to Crossroads.

Next up was Heritage Hall, the team we hoped would be strong. The first indicated that maybe the earlier games they had played were aberrations, that they were strong. Finally, after Heritage hall squandered three set points, Calvary ran off three straight points to win, 24-22. The second game was more indicative of Heritage Hall's play during the day, as the Patriots (woops, both teams were the Patriots) excuse me, as Calvary won easily 21-12. The last game of the evening, and our last pool play, was against Lakeland Christian. Lakeland was 4-2 at that point, but from my observation of their play was that they were a lower level team. Calvary dispatched Lakeland in a business-like way with identical scores of 21-12, 21-12.

Because were finished first in our pool, we earned a bye in the first round and wouldn't have to play until noon on Saturday, which of course the girls liked. There were two more rounds of pool play to go first thing in the morning, and after that all the brackets were determined. The first round of play was played at 9:30 and 10:45, and from that it was determined that Grace Baptist would be our first-round opponent. We had played Grace early in the season, and had actually dropped one set to them. We handled them rather easily the other three games we played them, so we were pretty sure that the set loss was just a blip. But after the game was over, we were wondering, how did we lose to this team?. The girls were efficient and effective. The first game was 25-6, and this time the girls did not lose focus in the second game, which ended 25-4, Calvary.

In the quarterfinals we faced WMCAA, a newcomer to the tournament. They had finished 9-1 in pool play, splitting their two games with Goshen, who we will hear about later. They had a couple of nice hitters, but seemed to not have faced an offensively gifted team like ours. They got rather flustered in the opening game, losing 25-10. In the second game, they got it together a little better, but not good enough. After pulling to within two at 13-11, the Patriots went on a 7-1 streak. They maintained that lead until the final, 25-16.

Now the real fun began. Heritage Christian High was our opponent next. Heritage had beaten us last year in the semis in two hard-fought sets. We had played them earlier this year, and while we had beaten them in three straight, they played us tough and two of the three games were really close. This game was similar to that game. I wil recap that game and the rest of the tournament tomorrow, as I'm falling asleep writing this.

Volleyball again

Coach Carr is upset because I made a long post about football and haven't posted about the game on Tuesday. Well, first of all, the football game occurred BEFORE the volleyball game. Second, there were TWO football games to cover. Third, I've spent every spare second working on the tournament stuff all week. So there. Anyway, enough whining....

On Tuesday, the girls took on Westville High School, the one perennial public school on the Patriots' schedule. In the past this has been a tough game for the girls; last year we played well and lost in five games. Three years ago, when the team was as strong as it ever was, with Rachel Kizer in the middle, the Patriots also went five games with them, winning that time. So at the beginning of the year we expected this to be a challenging game. However, I had done some research and found out it was a down year for the Blackhawks. For example, they lost in four to East Chicago Central who we beat in three straight. After the JV dispatched their JV team 25-14, 25-11, the varsity took the floor for warmups. Westville looked kind of like the teams we've faced in the past - tall, some good hitting. Their defense has always been spotty, but you can't get a feel for that in warmups. So the teams took the floor. Westville's defense was a little worse than it has been, meaning below average. Their offense was...well, also worse than in the past. Much worse. They had one hitter/blocker. Before we had settled into our seats and finished off our delicious beef sandwiches, it was 14-0. Yes, Cornerstone-level. Well, almost. We did have some nice hits, but the game wasn't close. It was 21-3 at one point, and as usual, the girls lost a little focus during the blowout but still won 25-7.

The second game was only different from the first one in that Westville's scoring was spread out throughout the game. However, Faith was hitting and Jessi was hitting and blocking and Taylor was hitting and blocking and ... well, to sum it up, it was 25-7 again. The third one was one of lost focus again. But even unfocused, the Patriots were better than Westville. The score was 7-7 at one point, and Calvary was only up 14-12 a bit later. The girls then sharpened up, with hits by Faith, Kara, and Rachel, and a couple of aces by Jessi S, and the final point was scored on a back-row hit by Ally, and the girls wrapped it up 25-14.

It's been a little frustrating this year, as we have such a good team while most of the competition has been down. The girls have played thirteen games this year, and maybe three or four have above snooze-level. Well, we'll see what's up the rest of the year, won't we?

Tomorrow the tournament begins. Calvary vs Crossroads at 12:45. We have cool programs with cool binders. The boards have been cleaned up, name signs have been made for the new teams, the moms are preparing enormous mounds of delicious food, and we should be ready to go. I, for one, am going to enjoy every second of it.

Well, Coach, was that long enough?

Back to football

The HSRC Patriots flag football team played two games this past Saturday at Luther East High School's field in Lynwood, IL. The opponents were the host team and the HRK Eagles of Gurnee. The Patriots had played Luther East the week before and had defeated them 41-20. The team Saturday was a little different for the Patriots, as there were a couple of players that were not able to be there for the first game, and some that were at the first who couldn't make it Saturday. And two coaches were there that missed last week's game. So our sideline was full - about sixteen players and six coaches, plus 40-50 family members.

The first game was a rematch of last week's game, Luther East versus HSRC Patriots, which was won by the Patriots, 41-20. HSRC received the opening kickoff and then proceed to score on a one-play drive, an exciting run by #11. (I'm sorry, but I don't know the names of the players. When I do, I will edit the posts and fill them in.) #11 then hit #23 for the two-point conversion. Luther East then put together a relatively long drive, earning one first down in the process, but ended up losing the ball on downs. Included in this drive was a sack by the Patriots. Then our guys scored on another one-play drive, this one a pass from #11 to #22 (Cody DeBoer, I believe). This time #11 threw to #13 for the extra points, and it was 16-0.
The Patriots put in a twist for their next "one-play" drive. On Luther East's first play from scrimmage after the kickoff, #34 (Jimmy Dill?) picked off a pass and returned it for a touchdown. #24 (Dana Hanna?) ran in the extra point this time and it was 23-0. Luther East then again failed to get a first down, and the Patriots went back to work on offense. Two passes from #11 to #91 (Stephen Bianchi) made it 29-0, where it stayed when the Patriots failed to convert the extra point. Two more possessions by Luther East ended in a punt and the end of the half, sandwiched around another one-play possession by HSRC, but this time the one play was an interception. 29-0, Patriots at the half.

The second half was shortened to twenty minutes due to time constraints that the Gurnee team had. Between this and the fact that Luther East tightened up their defense, there was only one score in this half. That was a pass from #11 to Dana Hanna on HSRC's first possession of the half. The extra point was not converted, and the lead was 35-0. A punt by Luther East, loss of the ball on downs by the Patriots, and a drive by Luther East that ended as the clock ran out concluded the game.

The next game was the Home Run Kids from Gurnee against the Patriots. We had played them in boys' volleyball and girls' basketball the past two years and Kristi has gotten to know John and Pam Ostrader quite well. This couple runs a pretty large homeschool sports program up there, and we're learning quite a bit from them. They have had a flag football team for a few years, so we expected things to be a little different against them. And it was. HRK marched down the field on the first possession and scored. After they completed the extra point via pass, it was 8-0. HSRC answered them, though, moving down the field and scoring themselves on a pass from #11 to Dana Hanna. Our extra point attempt failed, however, and the score was 8-6. It was the same score at half, as the defenses tightened up, and no scoring occurred until only a few minutes remained in the game, when HRK put it in to go up 14-6. The extra point pass fell incomplete, giving us a chance to tie the game with one last score. But after a couple of incomplete passes, the clock ran out and HRK took home the victory.

I have some stats for the games that I not sure of their accuracy. I did not give my full attention to the whole game, but this is my best estimate. If someone notices a glaring error, please leave a comment. Also, if there were any factual errors in the description of the games, also please let me know. In the first game, the Patriots ran three times for one first down and one touchdown. Passing was six for eight for three touchdowns and one first down, and one was intercepted. HSRC was sacked once. On defense, Luther East ran three times for two first downs, and they were 7 for 23 passing for two first downs, and one was intercepted, which HSRC returned for a touchdown. HSRC sacked LE's quarterback five times (this includes dropped snaps). Against HRK, the Patriots ran three times for one first down. Passing was six for seventeen for two first downs and a touchdown. Our quarterback was sacked three times. On defence, HRK ran three times for one touchdown; passing was ten for eighteen for three first downs and one touchdown, and HSRC sacked HRK's quarterback three times.

I won't be there Saturday, so if someone else wants to supply a recap of the game or keep stats or both, please send it over to me and I will post it on the blog.

Wow

Epic might be too strong a word. This was only a regular season game. It didn't even go to five. But wow. Just wow. Calvary, after dispatching Clinton Christian, took on Faith in the main event of the evening last night in Lafayette. The paying customers did not go home disappointed. Well, we did, because the girls lost their first game of the year. But those looking for some exciting, well-played volleyball got their money's worth.

After Faith took care of Clinton 25-15, 25-16, 25-16, Calvary beat Clinton as well, 25-14, 28-26, 25-16, and then it was time the main event, the heavyweight bout. And then we on Calvary's side began to wonder about whether the game was going to live up to its billing. Behind the solid serving of Taylor, Rachel and Faith, and the big hits of Taylor, Faith and Ally (yes Ally, hitting from the back row), Calvary found themselves with a 24-11 lead. But, as has happened before, the girls had trouble closing out the opponent, and gave up five points before finally winning 25-16.

Faith Christian seemed to get warmed up for the second game, and jumped out to a 9-5 lead. They are a very intelligent team, and were getting their points without a lot of big hits. They found the holes and played great defense. Calvary bounced back with a little rally, inlcluding a nice hit by Faith and another ace by Taylor. Then it was back and forth. The Patriots pulled out to a 17-14 lead, behind a couple of big blocks by Emily and Rachel, another spike by Faith, another back row hit by Ally, and the jump-serves of Faith. Faith got the next four, however, to regain the lead. From that point, neither team had more than a one-point lead. The teams were tied at 23 when Faith put us ahead with a big hit. Faith Christian got the next one. Then Taylor had a big hit. We couldn't close it out again. We got another one to make it 26-25. Faith Christian got the next one. We went up by one again. Still couldn't close it out. Four game points we had and couldn't capitalize on any of them. Faith Christian then got the next three to win 29-27.

The third game began with some fabulous saves by Big Red (another name I'm giving our team). We led 8-4 before Faith Christian started hitting and hitting the open spots. They got seven straight points before Coach Carr called a timeout. After a point exchange, Calvary crept back into it, due to, yes, you guessed it, another big hit by Faith. An out-of-rotation violation and a big block by Jessi Stas also contributed, and the Patriots led 16-15. No team had greater than a one point lead until Calvary, trailing 21-20, called on Taylor to get them back into it. And she did, with blocks on two consecutive points and the then putting one down, to give Calvary a 23-21 lead. But alas, Calvary would not score again, and Faith Christian took game three, 25-23.

Game four did not go like any of the other three. In this one, Calvary started sluggishly. I'm not sure if losing two close ones were weighing on them, or if they were just tired after playing six straight game. Whatever the reason(s), they had a lot of trouble with serve receiving and soon found themselves in a 10-2 hole. Then we got the serve back, and Faith, with that jump serve, got us a couple more points and we were down 10-5. Faith Christian then slowly increased the lead until it was 16-8. The teams exchanged points until it was 19-11. Calvary got the next three, including a hit by Taylor, gave up one, scored three which included an ace by Jessie C, gave up two before that streak was stopped by a nice hit by Jessi S followed by a Taylor ace, then gave up one before we scored three straight, making it 24-22. But, fittingly, Faith Christian scored the last one by finding a hole, and closed out the match 25-22.

Considering Calvary had just played a competitive match immediately preceding this one, a starter was out (sidebar: Kara got her cast off - YEAAAAA!!! - and was released to begin playing immediatey. Since she hadn't practiced, she wasn't allowed to play last night, but look out next week. Thanks to God and to everyone who prayed for her) and that the game was played at Faith, I have enough excuses to dismiss the results of the game. Seriously, it showed our girls the level of competition at state and gave them incentive to work a little harder so that when we face Faith Christian again at the state tournament, the results might be different.

Westville is the opponent for Tuesday, our last public school. Then the tournament next weekend. Looking forward to both.

Numbers

I have some stats for you. The cumulative record of the JHa, JVa, and varsity is 32-2-2. Overall game record is 75-8. Overall scoring is 1,952-1,161. Individually, varsity is 10-0, 28-1 in games (I'm still waiting for an explanation of that loss, girls). JV is 10-2-1, 7-1 in the regular season, 21-6 in games. Junior High A is 12-0-1, 7-0 in regular season, 26-1 in games. Interestingly, the one game dropped by the varsity, the one game dropped by the junior high, and one of the games dropped by the JV were all to the same school (and my cynical alter ego would say the same team) - Grace.

Tomorrow is a big day. Clinton, I believe, is 12-2. Faith was 12-0 before their last game on Tuesday. The biggest challenge of the season so far.

Go Patriots!

HSRC Flag Football

I realized that this blog is also for the HSRC, or Homeschool Resource Center, sports program as well as the Calvary volleyball team. The HSRC Patriots are now the organization under which the boy's volleyball team and the girl's basketball team played the last two years, and this fall we've expanded into flag football. The guys played Luther East at their place last Thursday for their very first game ever and came away with a 41-20 win. The Patriots gave up the first score of the game, but then scored the next 20 points to end the half with the lead, 20-7. The second half began with a Patriot score, but then Luther East scored the next two touchdowns to pull within seven points. But the guys scored the last two touchdowns resulting in the final score. I didn't keep any stats - I don't even know some of the players and I didn't get there at the start, but this is what I noted: #24 scored at least two touchdowns, Ted Carlson scored at least one, Cody DeBoer caught at least one touchdown pass, and Steve Bianchi intercepted two passes. Hopefully I can at least find out who scored the touchdowns.

Next games are Saturday at Luther East again. I believe they are playing two games.

Silence

That was what struck me about tonight's game - the silence. Even as we were blowing out Covenant, with a lot of good defense, some blocks and several big hits, the crowd was noticably quiet, almost bored. After getting pushed a bit the last couple of games, the drop off in the quality of the opponent was noticable, so the crowd seemed a little let down. The score was similar to several of the games played earlier in the season, but again the girls played to the level of their competition, so to speak. The final scores were 25-12, 25-10, 25-9. So

The girls were up early and often in the first game. The lead was up to 14-4 before Covenant got a couple of points. Then, after Calvary scored 4, Covenant got another one. Taylor then served five straight points to make the score 24-7. As they often do, Calvary got sloppy one point away from victory. They gave up five before they finally finished Covenant off.

The girls picked up where they left off in the second game. The intensity wasn't there, which was reflected in the score being even until it was 8-8. Then, as often happens, Taylor's serving got the Patriots on a run. She didn't stop serving until it was 21-8. I only noted two aces during that stretch, but her hard, dropping serves kept Covenant quite off balance. After a hitting error and another point given up, Calvary scored four more to win.

The girls were very focused to begin the third game. Three aces by Jessi Stas helped the girls to a 14-3 lead. The girls gave up a point and scored three. Then they gave up one and scored two. They then gave up two. They outscored Covenant 6-1 to close out the game.

The kills were spread around tonight. Jessie, Emily, Rachel, and Ally got kills in addition to the ones by the big three - Faith, Jessi, and Taylor. Aces were plentiful and also spread around. Covenant was inexperienced and couldn't match Calvary in talent.

Now we have our biggest test of the season. I have heard the girls talking about Faith all season, and now it's upon us. I hope the girls don't overlook Clinton - last I checked, Clinton had only one loss themselves. We start with Clinton at, we believe, 5:30 our time before we take on Faith at 7:00. Faith is currently 12-0 pending their game tonight. We are 10-0. It should be fun. See you there.

EDIT: The JV team won in two straight, 25-18, 25-11. The junior high also won.

Top of our game

I would have posted last night, but the headache and ringing in the ears from the three girls sitting (and singing and yelling and shrieking) behind me on the ride home prevented that. So blame them. EDIT: The three were Faith, Ally and Kara.

Last night the girls played their best game of the year so far (I think) in defeating the Quentin Road Eagles 25-13, 25-12. Don't let the score fool you. QR was not a bad team. I know the girls have defeated other teams earlier this year by about the same scores, but often it was only due to boredom that they let the opponent get that close. It was a little different last night.

We weren't sure what to expect. We knew that they had lost in a reasonably close match to Ridgewood earlier, and that they had also lost to Southside. We also had seen their JV team play very well in our tournament, beating our JV team and losing in three to Heritage in the finals. What we got was a team with a couple of talented players, but not very deep, and no match for us last night.

I won't go into too much detail about the game. But one telling thing is that from 9-9 in the first game to 14-3 in the second, Calvary outscored Quentin Road 30-7. During that stretch, the volleyball was beautiful. Great saves, perfectly placed dinks, big hits, great defense, blocking...I think that about covers it. They did fall into a stretch in the second game where the decision making wasn't great, but after that Faith scored seven straight points with that big jump serve and Calvary was comfortably ahead. One more thing: several times during the game, QR made an excellent save, but our girls calmly set the ball up again and got the point. Often a big save takes the wind out of the other team, but our girls played confidently and with precision.

EDIT: The JV fell again to QR, the team that defeated them in the semifinals of our tournament. I haven't got the score of the first game, but the second game was 27-25, QR. The JVb team also lost.

EDIT #2: Got word that the JHa team won the Southside tourney. Congrats to them!

Tuesday at 5:30 and 6:30 against Covenant in Demotte.

Tough competition

Tonight the girls faced their toughest challenge to date, except for maybe Kankakee Valley in the first game of the year. Heritage Christian High gave the girls everything they could handle, but eventually fell to Calvary 25-21, 25-15, 25-22.

In the first game, after a quick start, Calvary starting playing at the level they needed to win the last few games. This was not good enough tonight. After a big hit by Jessi Stas, a big hit by Faith, and an ace by Taylor, Calvary led 3-0. The girls then stopped playing defense, and soon it was 7-7. Then it was 11-7 Heritage. The Patriots got three back to pull within one, then the defense went south again and Heritage jumped out to a 19-11 lead. At this point, the defense got a little better, and the hitting got real good. They outscored Heritage 14-2 from that point and won the first game 25-21.

The Patriots started slowly in the second, staying even with Heritage until they regained their level from the end of the first game. They relentlessly pulled away until they led 24-13. Then after a service error and another point scored by Heritage, Calvary finished it off for a final of 25-15.

The third game saw another slow start by Calvary. They were down 4-2 this time before they woke up. Again good offense and good-enough defense was what provided the advantage for Calvary. An 11-3 run put Calvary on top 13-7. The defense and the decision making faltered for Calvary for a stretch, allowing Heritage to catch up at 14. The Patriots pulled out again to a 19-15 lead, and again allowed Heritage to catch up at 19. Calary got the next three and maintained the lead to finish the match, 25-22. Some shaky reffing in this game caused annoyance for both sides of the contest, but did not really change the outcome of the game.

Calvary is now 8-0 on the year. The JV also won, beating the recently-crowned champion of the Calvary JV tournament 25-21, 25-16. The difference in the game was the serving. Calvary has some very good servers on the JV team, and Heritage had trouble returning them. The rest of the JV's game was much better than it was in the brackets of the tournament - if they had played this well Saturday, they might have won the tourney. The JHb team lost in two and the JHa team defeated Protestant Reformed 25-24, 25-21.

The next game is this Friday against Quentin Road up in Lake Zurich. Times and maps are in the schedule at the bottom of the page. See you there.

JV tournament recap

I know you will all find this hard to believe, but I spent Friday evening and most of today at Lake Hills Baptist watching the JV tournament. No, I do not have any children, nieces, cousins, cousins' children or any other near or medium-distant relatives playing, I just have a volleyball problem - nothing that a good twelve-step program or intervention wouldn't cure. But for now, I am indulging my addiction, and the result is that you get a recap of the JV tournament.

I arrived Friday just in time to see Calvary play. Pool A play for the day was complete. I did find out the scores for the games completed before my arrival. They were: Quentin Road defeated Ridgewood, 21-7, 21-6; Heritage downed Schaumburg, 21-11, 21-19; Heritage beat Quentin Road, 21-18, 21-19; and Schaumburg overcame Ridgewood, 21-16, 21-16.

Calvary's first opponent was Grace Baptist, which strangely appeared to be the same team as the varsity faced the first weekend of the season. The themes of the games were great serving, poor serve receiving. There were a lot of very short points. Jenna and Holly's serving gave Calvary a 12-4 lead, then Grace's serving enabled them to catch up at 12. Then after a couple of point exchanges, then Calvary jumped out to a, I thought, insurmountable 19-14 lead. However, Grace served themselves back into it. It was tied at 20. Each team then had opportunities to win the game, but couldn't finish the job. Then Holly went down with what looked like might be a serious leg injury. Calvary hung in there but finally lost 25-24, with the rules of play being that 25 was the cap. The next game was quite different. The girls stopped making a lot of the mistakes they made in the first and won 21-15. EDIT: Forgot to mention that Holly was not seriously hurt and returned to play in the second game.

We them watched Indy Silver Lightning handle Soutside rather easily, 21-14, 21-8, then witnessed Grace slip by Southside 24-22, 21-15. We then took on Indy Silver Lightning. After a tightly contested first game, won by Calvary 21-17, the girls seemed to get into a rhythm and ISL fell apart, resulting in a convincing victory for the Patriots, 21-6.

On Saturday, Pool A played early and the results were Heritage over Ridgewood 21-10, 21-9, and Quentin Road beating Schaumburg 21-18, 21-10. These games put Heritage and Quenting Road into the semifinals, with Heritage winning Pool A and Quentin Road finishing second. Then Calvary and Southside played for the first Pool B game of the day. Calvary won handily the first game 21-10, so Coach Carr put in the B team for the second game. They struggled, so Coach gradually put back several A team members in, until I believe four were back playing. Despite this, our girls found themselved down 20-14 before they got the serve back. In these days of rally scoring, a lead like this almost always is impossible to overcome. However, with Holly serving, Calvary did just that. Holly served seven straight points, and the Patriots eked out a 22-20 win. After the Silver Lightning defeated Grace 21-12, 21-17, the brackets were set. Indy Silver Lightning, second place in Pool B, was matched up with Heritage Christian first, then Calvary, as the first place team in Pool B, would play Quentin Road.

Heritage quickly disposed of Indy Silver Lightning in the one of the most lopsided contests of the weekend, 21-9, 21-5. Then it was our turn in the second semifinal. In the first game, the girls' defense was not good and the front row play was inconsistent and tentative. Due to the poor defense, there wasn't many good sets or hits as the team was often scrambling. However, the free ball third hits were often weak popups to QR's front row, giving them an opportunity to easily set up a play. Despite all this, the girls played well enough to be in the game, but did end up dropping the first one 21-16. In the second, the girls played better but were very tentative - they seemed to play not to make mistakes rather than aggresively. But it wasn't enough, and the girls dropped the second game 21-19.

The girls them played in the third place game. They played better, well enough to defeat Indy Silver Lightning 21-16, 21-17 for third. Heritage, after playing horribly in the first game, ended up winning the tournament, defeating Quentin Road 6-21, 21-17, 15-10.

Jessica Neeley and Holly Schaap were both named to the all-tournament team, along with a player from Grace, one from Indy Silver Lightning, two from Quentin Road, and two from Heritage including the MVP, setter Samantha Andringa.

Speaking of Heritage, their teams will be visiting us on Tuesday. JHa at 4, JHb at 5, JV at 6 and varsity at 7. See you there. Especially the superfans.

Sickness can't stop them

The Calvary Patriots faced the East Chicago Central Cardinals tonight in East Chicago and came away with their seventh straight victory, 25-10, 25-20, 25-16. This despite several of the girls fighting various ailments and with Tina going down with a rolled ankle in warmups. There are so many of the girls with colds and such that the official team cheer now consists of coughing in unison.

Poor Tina. After missing all last year with a broken wrist that wouldn't heal, now this. Let's hope and pray that it isn't serious.

Anyway, back to the game. The first game began with both teams playing tentatively, with ragged play and errors on both sides. After starting out close, Calvary pulled away a little to a 12-7 lead, causing EC to call a timeout. Maybe they regret that now, because the Patriots went on a 13-3 run from there (and that included once again giving up a couple of points on game point) to finish out the Cardinals, 25-10. Faith wasn't jump-serving, and with her coughing I thought it was because she was sick. However, she did tell me after the game that the lighting made it tough for her to see the ball when she jump-served. Good thing they didn't need it.

The second game saw EC cleaning up a lot of their errors. They also served quite well and picked up a lot of our hits. All this being said, Calvary never trailed and when they stretched the lead to 17-10, EC called timeout. This time it helped, as the Cardinals pulled within three at 18-15, but could get no closer and Calvary completed their second game victory, 25-20.

I don't know if it was because the girls were too relaxed after winning the first two, but they dropped behind 4-1 quite quickly in the third. The girls then rallied to take a 5-4 lead, and from there the lead went back and forth. Our girls benefited from a lot of service errors, and again pulled out to a comfortable lead at 18-11. EC then called a timeout. This time it didn't help. They made several more errors, and the game ended on yet another error by EC.

Other than losing focus at times, the girls played well despite their sicknesses. And Tina and Kara cheered very well from the bench. Let's hope for quick healing for the girls.

The JVa team defeated EC's JV team 25-13, 25-16. The JVb team lost to EC's freshman team, 24-25, 21-25. Report from Romeoville was that the JHa team won 25-15, 25-19 and the JHb team also won in two.

The next game for the varsity is next Tuesday at home against Heritage Christian. Please check the calender.