I guess I didn't miss much

And if I had skipped last night's games, I still probably wouldn't have missed much.

How the mighty have fallen.

I referred in an earlier post to a 31-29 loss in fourth game of the state final to Faith in 2009. At one point in that season we were 43-2, with our only two losses to Faith. In 2007, Clinton Christian finished in the top four of our tournament. The teams we played tonight were NOT those teams.

Quick recap of the week's earlier games: two no-contests, with walk-overs against Covenant Christian, 25-11, 25-12, 25-16 and Hebron, 25-6. 25-11, 25-15, with liberal substitutions and position-switching. We kind of expected that against Covenant, but Hebron had taken one game in our match last year, so we were expecting a little more out of them.

Last night we started off against Clinton Christian, a Mennonite school out of Goshen. As I mentioned, they historically have been a pretty strong program. I have no idea what happened to them. Even as recently as two years ago, they took us to 28-26 in one game (albeit in a three-game sweep). This year's edition complemented a complete lack of ability to hit with horrible setting and mediocre defense. I counted two kills the entire match for Clinton and both might have been called defensive errors on us. The scoreboard operators did their best to help Clinton, giving them one of our points, but even with that the final of game one 25-9. After a bumpy start, we settled down and at one point, ran off thirteen straight points (even though the scoreboard operator disagreed with me). We made a few errors toward the end, but still finished with the decisive victory. We had the same kind of start in game two, leading only 4-3 at one point. Jenna, who doesn't usually serve, started doing her Taylor/Faith impersonation, scoring three aces out of six points. CCS ran off nine in a row, traded points to 15-5, then ran off ten more to finish the game. In that stretch were three aces by Katie, a kill by Kassie, a kill by Holly and two by Ally. The third game was goof-around time. Faith had a few kills early, then took over setting responsibilities. Top performers in the game included Kassie, who contributed two aces and a kill; Taylor, with three or four kills; and Holly, with a couple kills and an ace. Final was 25-12.

Faith gave us a decent game last year, scoring 13, 15, and 18. The started four seniors, so they had some experience. However, they too had little offense and even with significantly better setting and defense than Clinton, were no match for the Patriots. A little aside here: I wonder how many teams like Faith that we play say to themselves, We're close. If we clean up this, or improve that, we could play with CCS. Those of us who have witnessed enough games and know that the girls often play to the level of their competition would respond with, You should have seen them play Andrean/Loogootee/Kankakee Valley/Crown Point. You're not close. Back to the match. The girls seemed to have a little Clinton hangover to start. We made some really uncharacteristic errors which led to a 6-2 Faith lead. As has often happened, the momentum changer was a nice Faith kill. Lauren, whose serves are beginning to resemble Taylor's, score two aces around a Faith out-of-rotation (another aside, the down ref's mission in life seemed to be to call every early switch - he called at least four of those in the match) to tie it up. FCS scored two (including an OOR call on us) before the Patriots took command. They scored eleven of the next twelve points to make it a 17-9 game. In that stretch Holly had a nice block to go with the various kills and aces. FCS scored two again, but that was the last time they scored two in a row. Holly contributed a dink kill and an ace, Ally had a couple of aces, and Taylor finished off the game one 25-13 victory with a smash.

Our girls got the early lead in game two, 3-0, but FCS tied it up quickly on our errors, then took the lead on a dink kill. Lauren stopped that run with a kill, and Taylor followed it up with two aces. Faith then scored two kills and the game was in hand. Faith kept the lead at only five until at 14-9, CCS scored five in a row with Faith's great jump serves and timely hitting by Holly, and put the game out of reach. The lead stayed around ten until the end, which was scored on another Jenna ace. 25-15, CCS. The Patriots established themselves early in game three. Faith and Lauren started out the hitting, then Taylor picked it up, followed by Holly firing aces. After a Lauren block, who played excellent defense at the net all night, the lead was 16-4. The girls completely lost focus (they started GAT in other words - that's goof-around time - we need another acronym), allowing Faith to score six in a row, making the score 21-15. They then committed a service error, which seemed to get our girls back on track. Taylor followed that up with a nice block, FCS couldn't handle a Faith jump serve, and it was in hand. 25-16 was the final in game three.

We are now 22-1 on the season. The Patriots have won 55 games while losing 6, and have scored 1477 points while giving up 976. Last year after 23 matches we were 20-3, winning 52 games, losing 10. Westville is on the agenda for next Tuesday, a team we have easily defeated the last two years, but who have new coach that Coach Carr is familiar with, and that may make a difference for them, but after checking their record, that may not occur for a while. We then have opportunity to stretch our Calumet Invitational championship streak to three. I am really looking forward to that.