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.