Short post for a long night.

Tonight we went to Lafayatte - Faith Christian School, specifically - to play Clinton Christian and the host school in the second consecutive trimatch involving these three teams. Faith is a place we are quite familiar with, having traveled there approximately 73 times last year. Thanks, Keith. Anyway, Faith was our nemesis last year, having dealt us two of our five defeats. The last of the eight games played between these two teams was an intense hard fought win for Faith, 31-29.

This year was a totally different story. But I'll get to that in a minute. Our first game tonight was against Clinton. Last year Clinton played us pretty tough in the middle game, while Calumet beat Clinton somewhat more easily in games one and three. Clinton was a very good defensive team last year. This year they were pretty good on defense, but not great on offense. On to the game.

The Patriots started out pretty slowly. After a Faith dink kill and block made it 2-1 Calumet, the girls made a few errors and it was 4-4. Then the girls started getting untracked. A kill by Faith, then a couple of aces by Faith and a kill by Taylor and a Clinton error made it 9-4. Calumet slowly pulled away behind a flurry of kills and aces, mostly by Taylor and Faith. The game was capped off with a nice kill by Ally and the Patriots had game one, 25-16. 

Game two saw the Patriots run out to a 9-0 lead. Taylor's serving was supported by nice hitting all around, with kills by Rachel, Holly and Faith. After a "heifer" (inside joke), Holly got things headed back in the right direction with a kill. Clinton found their game and stayed with Calumet until it was 19-6. Then Taylor decided the game should be over. Holly had a kill and Clinton made a hitting error, then four consecutive aces by Taylor and her "new" jump serve finished it, 25-6.

Game three was similar to game two. Several errors by Clinton and kills by Rachel, Faith, Emily and Ally gave CCS an 11-3 lead. After giving up a couple of points, Emily got another kill and then it Faith ripped off a couple of aces. The lead stayed around there until Taylor put the match to bed with a kill. Final score of game three was 25-15.

Now it was time to play Faith (FCS so we don't get them confused with our Faith). Five of their starters from last year had graduated. Their JV team was very weak last year so we knew that they weren't going to get much help from there. So what did we do? Started out with three consecutive hitting errors. Finally Emily put one down to get CCS on the board. Further Calumet foundering occurred, then at 5-3 FCS, Faith crushed one. Then it was Holly serving fest. She served twelve consecutive points, including five aces. That made it 16-5. The lead was about ten or so until 20-10, when three straight CCS points moved the lead to thirteen. Some points were exchanged and Taylor finished it off with a kill - 25-13 CCS.

No slow start for game two. Kill by Faith, consecutive aces by Taylor, and a net violation on FCS made it 4-0. That set the tone for the game. Lots of kills pushed the lead out to 11-3. More kills and aces contributed to make it 17-5. FCS got their game working for a short time, scoring four in a row. An Ally kill interrupted that, but then FCS got two more to make it 18-12. We can always depend on Faith to stop the opponent's momentum and that's what she did here. Kill, Faith. The girls methodically stretched the lead until an Emily kill ended it at 25-15.

The girls started showing a little fatigue. They had a 7-2 lead early, but FCS kept hanging in there. After they pulled to within 11-8, CCS scored three in row. FCS kept hanging around and CCS started making some errors. FCS pulled to within three at 20-17 on a CCS error, but they would only score one more point. Holly put one down and then Ally finished it with an ace.

Quick turnaround tomorrow, as we take on Hebron at 9:30. Girls, let Coach get some sleep tonight.