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.