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.