Pool day at Quentin Road

Pool play at the Dayspring Classic is complete, and the Calumet Patriot still have yet to lost even a set, much less a match in pool play so far this year. Last year the girls were perfect in pool play in both our tournament and Quentin Road, and this year's team has matched it.

I was only able to witness the last match of the evening and part of the second to last match (thank you, girls, for the LOUD greeting). Interestingly, a team had to drop out this tournament at the last minute this year, and Crossroads was invited to replace them. As I mentioned when I recapped our tournament, Crossroads is an up-and-coming team, quite young but quite talented. They finished third in our tournament, defeating Heritage in the quarters, but losing to Quentin Road in the semis. For some reason, the QR people put Crossroads into our pool, even though the team that dropped out was not in our pool. So, by my estimation, there are about six or seven teams capable of winning this tournament, and three are in our pool.

Crossroads was our first match of the day. From talking to the coaches and others, I gathered that the girls played well, continuing to put to rest the former characteristic of Calumet teams of not being able to play early. Crossroads, as mentioned, is a talented team, and the report is that their defense has gotten much better. After a relatively easy first set, 25-12, Crossroads started digging Calumet's hits in the second set, making a much more competitive set. Calumet did prevail, however, by a 25-22 score.

Game two was against Ravenswood. This game was a "yikes" game. After coasting through a 25-7 first set, in which Coach Carr substituted liberally, they really shook things up for the second game. Faith and Amanda were the setters, and two of the hitters were Jenna and Kassie. Also, the other girls that were hitting were hitting with their left hands. Throw in general silliness, and the Patriots squeaked by 25-22 in the second. From what I understand, Coach Carr had to "refocus" the girls after this one.

East Moline was next. It was 9-0 CCS in the second set when I walked in. And got loudly greeted. The Patriots kind of went through the motions in this game, winning both by the same score of 25-13.

The last pool play game and the last game of the night was against Maranatha, the team we thought was going to be the strongest opponent in our pool. Maranatha is the high school associated with the college in Wisconsin that hosts the volleyball camp that our girls attend. From what I hear, they pushed the girls a little at camp, but weren't really at their level. This game reaffirmed that. In set one, at 2-1 Maranatha, Faith made a statement with a crushing kill, a beauty. That so flustered Maranatha that they followed it with two hitting errors. Then ace, Holly; kill, Faith; ace again; then another. Then Maranatha started pushing the ball to the back corners and the girls were having difficulty getting to them. Maranatha outscored the girls 7-6 and the lead was 14-9. The girls retook control here and outscored Maranatha 5-1 to take a nine point lead. An ace by Taylor and a kill by Holly were included in this run. The teams played relatively even from that point, and it ended on a kill by Faith, making the final score 25-14.

The girls started strong in set two, but Maranatha played their best volleyball in this stretch. It went from a 3-1 CCS lead to a 7-5 Maranatha lead here, but that was about the end of it. The Patriots ran off six straight here behind kills by Holly, Ally and Taylor (2). After a Maranatha block. Taylor got things back on track with another two kills sandwiched around a Maranatha hitting error. A bit later a Faith kill made the score 21-11. They then ran into a bit of a LGFS, and Maranatha got their point total up to 16 before a defensive error gave CCS their game point.

Tomorrow the girls will play either Nazarene or Ravenswood at 9:15. Hopefully there will be good games later in the day.