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.