Last year seventh; this year second

Quite the improvement. To be fair to last year's team, the competition was a bit better last year, and we were thisclose in all three of the losses we had last year (which were all of the losses we had all year).

This tournament starts with pool play. The eight teams are divided into two pools of four. Each team plays the other three teams in its pool and then the first, second, third and fourth place teams play each other.  Our pool included Andrean, Eastern Greene, and Rockville. Eastern Greene and Andrean were in our pool last year, and were two of the teams that barely beat us. We also faced Rockville last year in the final game and defeated them. First up was Eastern Green, 32-5 and a class 2A quarterfinalist last year. Their big hitter was back. Their setter, apparently was not. EG's setter was called for doubling at least eight times during our match. We fell behind in each of our two games, but at 7-7 in the first game we took off, with hits spread around among all our hitters. The Patriots moved to a 17-12 point lead and never lead by less than four in the 25-16 win. Game two was quite the same; the tie this time was at 8. Calumet gradually opened up the lead to nine at 22-13 behind good hitting, especially a big one by Rebekah, and they soon closed out the win at 25-17.

Andrean, the big Catholic school in Merrillville was our next opponent. Andrean was ranked one behind us in the preseason Times poll and had beaten us in three last year. Our game today with them started with sloppy play from both teams. We led 7-6 when Andrean cleaned things up, while we didn't. The 59ers went on a 10-2 run with some help from us, but mostly big hits on their part. We made a mini-run and got to within three, but that was it and Andrean took game one, 25-19. Game two was much cleaner. There was no lead greater than one until a Taylor kill made it 8-6. Three points were added to make it a five point game, but Andrean came back to tie it. Calumet went on a 8-2 run and didn't trail again. A Taylor dink finished the game at 25-21. Game three saw a great comeback from CCS. The girls went on a streak of errors. Andrean augmented those with a couple of kill.  11-5, Andrean. In a fifteen-point game, that score usually means the game is over. Not so fast. Kill, Taylor. Hitting error, Andrean, Kill, Ally. Hitting error, Andrean. Time out, Andrean. We had a serving error coming out of the timeout. 12-9, Andrean, but consecutive dink kills by Holly and Taylor, an Andrean hitting error and a back row kill by Ally gave us the lead. Andrean dinked one in to tie it at 13. Faith then put one down and Taylor finished off the amazing comeback with an ace. What a game.

Game three was against Rockville. They had lost a lot of their team from last year to graduation, and were the weakest team in the pool. Coach Carr put in all the subs, and the girls relaxed a bit, playing down to their competition. The did open up a nine-point lead in set one, but then they let Rockville back into it and ended winning 25-19. Set two was more of a struggle to find rhythm from the beginning. Finally the girls got it together, and after trailing 16-15, stretched it out to a 25-18 win to put us into the championship game. More about that tomorrow.