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.