Faithless

That was too easy. The title line, that is.

But we did find out how good this team is without her.

Pretty good.

In fact, very good. The Patriots rolled to their second consecutive ICST championship on Saturday, defeating the Goshen Blue Blazers 25-16, 25-21, 25-15 in the semifinals and in a display of dominance, crushing the Arthur Okaw Christian Riders in the championship, 25-16, 25-7, 25-14, all without their star player, Faith. Actually, the state championship was accomplished in the defeat of Goshen, as Arthur is an Illinois team. So I guess the girls are now either the champions of the IICST or you might call them bi-state champions.

As all of you know by know, Faith badly sprained her ankle at Thursday's practice. It was soon determined that she would definitely be out for the state tournament (Her status for NACA is uncertain at this time). Coach's answer to this was to move Ally into Faith's position, change to a 5-1 with Katie setting, and playing Bekah and Mandi in Ally's slot. The girls were a little out-of-sorts to begin the match, but considering that they had not played this formation all year, they played pretty well. Goshen didn't challenge very much either, so the girls had a chance to get comfortable. It was 6-5 CCS when the girls began a little streak. Points were achieved from blocks, hits, dinks, and the a Holly ace made it 13-6. A Goshen dink kill was only a momentary interruption, as the girls ran off another four. A little Goshen run made it 20-13. Mandi stopped that run with a block, then Taylor dominated the end of the game with two kills and a block to account for three of the last four points.

The Patriots seemed to have more trouble adjusting in the second game than the first. They fell behind 9-6, mostly because of their own errors, defensive and hitting. Holly got things going the right way with a kill. That started a run of five points to give CCS the lead. Goshen ran off three at 13-13 to give them the lead, but Calumet answered that with four. Goshen scored on a spike to tie it again, but Ally and Holly got kills, and CCS never relinquished the lead. Another Holly kill closed out game two.

In game three, the teams split the first four points. Ally put the Patriots into the lead with a kill, then Taylor got one from the back row. A little aside - the back row hitting was beautiful all day. A bit later a Katie ace was followed by back-to-back kills from Ally and the game was for all intents and purposes, over. Goshen got no closer than three as they began to make errors and our girls continued their stellar play. The lead got pushed out to 22-9 on a Kassie ace before, yes, a LGFS. Of the last six points scored by Goshen, four were from unforced errors by CCS. The game and match ended somewhat anticlimactically, on a Goshen hitting error.

Arthur had coasted past Horizon in the first semifinal. (I could put together a whole post on why Horizon has a trophy case full of fourth-place volleyball trophies, but I will refrain. I will try to be positive ;-). )  Arthur Okaw from Arthur, Illinois. We still are not sure what they were doing at the Indiana Christian School Tournament. I have a thought or two, but I'm keeping that to myself. (See parenthetical statement above.) However, we were thankful that we had what we thought would be a tough opponent in the final. We had faced Arthur in the semifinals of our tournament and in a one-game pool play match at Quentin Road. Both times it looked they were intimidated, and they didn't score more than fourteen in any game. But with Faith out, CCS would be playing short-handed and the intimidation factor would lessened, if not gone altogether.

We got the early lead at 5-3, but Arthur ran off four straight points. The good thing about that was three of the points were off unforced errors. That 7-5 lead turned out to be the highlight of Arthur's afternoon. We matched the four points, gave up one on a missed serve, then scored three more. Arthur scored two more to get within two, but that was as close as they would get. Except for the beginning of the next two games, that was as close as they would get all afternoon. A hitting error was followed by an ace by Mandi and a dink kill by Lauren. Shortly thereafter, an Arthur kill brought them to within three. That hope was quickly squashed by two Ally kills, a block by Holly and Ally and a kill by Holly. Taylor finished off that run with a back-row kill. Arthur scored three of the next four, but a Holly kill on an over pass was followed by an Arthur hitting error and Taylor finished with a kill.

Game two didn't look much different than game one. At least for a while. CCS had the same lead of 5-3, but this time they moved the lead out to 10-5. We hit one into the net on a kill attempt but that was the last point Arthur would score for a while. Holly began a serving streak in which her serving arm got so tired that Coach had to replace her. Just kidding. Arthur could not get any hits in to start with, then it was kills by Taylor, Lauren and Bekah, followed by blocks: first a solo by Lauren, then a double from Lauren and Holly, then a dink/block by Lauren. When the dust settled, the Patriots had run off fourteen in a row. Arthur dinked one down to delay the inevitable, but they followed that with a serving error to end it.

It seemed at this point that the outcome of the third game was a foregone conclusion. The play confirmed this. No long streaks, but Calumet established the early lead and never gave it up. A block by Ally and Lauren made it 4-1. An Ally kill made it 7-2. A back-row kill by Ally and it was 15-6. The biggest lead was twelve at 20-8 and 21-9. Arthur put together a little stretch of good play, getting as close as nine, but they ended with a mishit and the Patriots reigned again.

Two straight state titles. Three consecutive Calumet Invitational championships. Three straight Quentin Road titles. Back-to-back Kankakee Valley Tourney victories. Terre Haute tourney victors.
Reigning Division 1 NACA champions (I love writing that). A whisker away from adding a Lafayette Central Catholic tournament and another state title to all of that. The accomplishments of this senior class is astounding. Now they have the opportunity to add to all that with another NACA championship. And to get this last one without their captain and best player speaks volumes about their ability and character.

Congratulations, girls.

Perspective

So, CCS lost to Munster. The fact that the team, families and fans were so disappointed about the outcome says a lot about the program and this team specifically. Five years ago, if you said that Calumet would be 18-2 against IHSAA and IHSA teams, with victories over some of the best teams in the region, would that have been reason for regret? Absolutely not. It would have been occassion for wild celebration. Now we expect to beat everybody. And that's a good thing. 
Sometimes extremely high expectations are difficult to live up to. Sometimes teams have an off night, don't play their absolute best. It happens to everyone. Considering that the girls started off tight, and never really got into their game, the fact they lost in four, every game close, tells you that this is a pretty good team. A really good team. A team good enough to get to #2 in the region, with a cast that could have been made that they should have been number one. If the rankings remain as they are, this team will have beaten four of the top twelve teams in the region - Andrean, Kankakee Valley, Crown Point and Griffith. They beat the #3 team in 2A in the state, Eastern Greene. It wasn't that long ago that we were excited about beating Westville.

It looked like it was going to be a long night, the way game one started. A shanked pass, a mishit, and a setting error gave Munster the early 3-0 lead. A serving error by Munster broke up the streak, but Munster retained the lead until two Munster errors followed by two Faith kills made it 8-7, CCS. Munster then went on a 7-1 run, with kills, blocks and a lot of Patriot errors. From there, Taylor, Faith and Lauren did their best to keep us in it with kills, but the errors kept piling up and soon it was 23-15, Munster. Calumet made one last surge - Holly got a kill and two blocks in the streak - which ended  on a net violation. Faith put down one more ball before the next Calumet spike attempt went out to make the final score 25-22.  Game two started with kills from both teams, but at 5-5 Munster ran off five straight, all but one of which came from an error from our side. We then ran off four, but they ran off five more and CCS trailed by six. CCS still trailed by five when they scored three but the girls never got closer than two the rest of the way and lost by the same score, 25-22.

There were somewhat fewer errors in game three, but there still were too many. Faith started dinking and finding the holes, but we either trailed or the game was tied until Ally put one down when the ball popped up after she blocked it.  Katie followed with an ace and tbe Patriots led 15-13. The girls continued their strong play, stretching the lead to 23-16 at one point. Munster made a little run but a dink by Faith finished it with CCS winning 25-21. Game four didn't follow the script of the first three. CCS, after falling behind 4-2, went on an 8-2 run to go up 10-6. Faith, Ally and Taylor made the kills and Holly added a nice block. But things went south quickly from there. Munster made a couple of nice kills and a block which seemed to unnerve our girls. We started making a lot of errors. Munster did as well for a while, so the score remained close until at 15-14 CCS, Munster stopped making errors and we did not. Except for consecutive Taylor kills to make it 21-18, it was all Munster from there. A block and a kill closed out the game and match, 25-19.

The night before the girls defeated Illinois Lutheran, but the first game had an inexplicable breakdown by the girls which resulted in a loss in that game, 26-24, and this was after CCS had a 17-7 lead at one point. The Patriots got down to business in games two and three, winning easily 25-12 in each, but that first game showed that we have to be sharp in all our games, which was of course very evident in last night's match. I wasn't able to attend the games on Tuesday, which the girls won each in two straight, but the report is that they didn't play their best there either, but just good enough to win.

Regionals begin on Monday, with a game against Heritage at Heritage at 6:00. If the girls play well, it should mean back-to-back state championships. The only teams that can push us are Goshen, Arthur, and possibly Heritage. The goofy way the tournament is set up means that if we beat Heritage, we play on Tuesday against a significantly weaker team, from the area, at Granger. Then we travel to Indianapolis eleven days later to play another team from the north in the semifinals. I think the tournament should be renamed the ICST - the Illogical Christian State Tournament. Thursday we play both Goshen and Heritage in a tri-match at Heritage, and Friday is a last-minute addition to the schedule as we play Illinois Lutheran again.

Oh yeah, the Quentin Road tournament...

Hopefully this will be worth the wait.

By this time, of course, everyone has read the newspaper accounts of the big tournament victory this past Saturday...oh wait. I guess I'll have to fill you in. You've heard that we, once again, went through pool play unscathed, which meant we were our pool's number 1 seed, earning a late start on Saturday. Our first round opponent for the 10:30 match was Pathway, a team CCS dispatched easily on Friday. One day did not make much of a difference. Early on, Pathway couldn't handle Taylor's serves. A bit later, Faith, Ally and Taylor scored on kills. Then Pathway found Faith's serves unreturnable. A Kassie ace made it 23-7, then the LGFS, then Faith said enough with a spike for the 25-12 first game win. Game two was even less eventful. A Lauren kill made it 23-7 in this game; however, there was no LGFS in this one. Katie put one down (yes, Katie got the opportunity to pound the ball) and Pathway moved into the consolation bracket by serving into the net.

Calumet's quarterfinal opponent was their old Quentin Road rival, Saline Christian of Somerset, KY. The last loss CCS suffered in this tournament was against Saline in the championship game of the 2008 tournament. The next year the Patriots beat them in the semifinals, and last year Saline was the finals opponent. Saline is one of the best defensive teams we face, and today they offset the loss of their star player of last year, Sarah Mills, by great serving. We seemed to be on our heels all match, rarely getting a clean pass off the serve. We started off this match by making a lot of errors. A serving error put us in a 4-2 hole. The girls turned things around, scoring five of the next six points. Saline tied it up and it remained a one- or two-point game until the girls started stringing together kills capped off by a big hit off an overpass by Holly and the Patriots led 18-12. However, the Saints scored the next seven, mostly on our errors, to take the lead. A kill by Faith, a nice block by Holly, a Saline hitting error and a kill by Holly put CCS back up by three, and shortly thereafter a kill by Ally and a block by Holly and Ally closed out game 1, 25-20.  It looked like we would have an easy time of it in game two. A Katie kill put us up 8-2 and a short time later a Taylor/Holly block made it 13-5. This time it was an eight-point Saline run which included three aces. Two kills by Taylor and two by Ally restored the lead to four. From there, our big kills were offset by our unforced mistakes but they girls maintained at least a three-point lead until a Faith kill, a Holly/Taylor block and a Taylor kill put the Patriots into the semis, 25-19.

Freedom Farm, a surprise quarterfinal winner over the host team was up next. They were no match for the girls, especially in game 1. Aces and kills came from everyone, and many of Freedom Farm's points came from our errors. Even an infamous bump kill was seen. The girls had three kills in a row from three different players to make it 24-9, and after a CCS service error, Freedom Farm matched it to end it. The girls ran out the lead to 20-10 in game two, this time from a lot of Freedom Farm errors, as our girls seemed to have lost the edge a little so the big hits weren't as frequent. FF made a little run, getting as close as six a couple of times, but an unforced error by FF followed by a Faith ace ended it at 25-17. On to yet another championship match.

The finals victim, er, opponent was Schaumburg, a 25-9 loser to the Patriots in the pool play. The errors evident in the Freedom Farm game continued in the early part of the first game. Kills and aces were mixed in, but because of the errors the girls couldn't pull away. Until this point in the game. The kill conga line was started by Holly, Taylor followed and the Ally took two turns. One missed kill and the streak was back on, Taylor again then Lauren. The lead was seven and stayed about there until at 20-12, there was the opposite of a LGFS. A Schaumburg hitting error was followed by three straight kills, the last from the back row by Faith, and an Faith ace completed the five-point run to end the game, 25-12. Faith really dominated the last game, both with kills and aces. Schaumburg really had no chance in this one. Amanda F. got in on the fun with a kill to make it 20-7. Schaumburg got one to hit the ground, but Taylor, Lauren, Faith and Ally ran off a string of kills. Schaumburg scored two to get to double-digits, but fittingly Faith completed the championship with a kill. Calumet had the three-peat.

I just got word that the girls played sluggishly tonight but were still able to defeat both Quentin Road and Schaumburg, both in two games. If you count all the pool play games, that gives Calumet a 48-1 record on the year. I will blog later about the records and rankings and stats. In the meantime, we have Illinois Lutheran and Munster yet this week, which should give me plenty to blog about.

Well, that was different

No, not the outcome of the pool play. THAT was pretty much the same thing. It was the drawing of blood that was different. Volleyball isn't really a violent game. There is very little contact between the opponents. Tonight, though, Taylor made an opposing player bleed so much that she had to be taken out of the game.

Wow, did she hit that ball hard. So hard that the poor girl on the other side of the net couldn't get her hands up fast enough to protect her face. The ensuing bloody nose ended her play in the game. I talked to Taylor. She pretended to be sorry for a second then asked, "Are you going to write about it in your blog?".

There you go, Taylor.

The volleyball play was pretty soporific. (You're going to have to look that one up.) Our opponents scored between nine and fourteen points in every game. Since the level of intensity and focus was inversely proportionate to the ability of the opponent, some of the higher point totals were scored by the lesser opponents. I missed the first three games, the opponents being Ravenswood (14), First Baptist of Danville (11) and Community (10). Schaumburg was CCS's opponent for the first game I witnessed. Schaumburg had taken fourth in our tournament and I thought they might give us a game. Of course, I didn't know that the Patriots were going be at the top of their game. Schaumburg played well, but our girls were on fire, especially Taylor. In the middle of the game in a stretch in which CCS outscored Schaumburg 17-2, Taylor had five kills by my count. Everyone was joining in the fun, however, as there were remarkably few errors. Almost all the points were earned. All a little LGFS did was make the final 25-9 after the Patriots had been up 24-6.

The next game was against North Love. The girls' intensity dropped sharply until at 17-13 they decided to pull it together. Six of the eight straight points they scored from here were on kills, three each from Faith and from Holly. 25-13, Patriots.

Pathway of Iowa was next on the menu. They used to be pretty decent, but not any more. The level of concentration by Calumet was about equivalent to the level in the previous game, which enough to secure the 25-12 win against a team that should have been dispatched with them scoring about half what they did. Ally was really big in this game, with four kills and an ace. Taylor had a similar number of kills. Jenna got one from the back row, and Lauren added a kill and an ace.


Faith, the school from Ohio, was our 7:00 appointment. Faith looked decent from what we saw of them, so the girls were pretty sharp. Taylor was razor sharp on her serves, scoring six aces in the 9-0 run CCS had to open the game. Faith and Taylor carried the hitting load in this one, but the kill the got us the fourteenth point was the memorable one. Taylor crushed one right past the block directly into the face of the poor girl setting up to cover. It was painful to see, and I'm quite sure more painful for her. The hitting and acing continued from that point, and Lauren contributed a nice block After a nice dink from Jenna, Faith Christian hit one into the net to close it out, 25-9.


Maranatha was the final pool play victim. They were playing well all day and came into the game as undefeated, as were we. But the play was reminiscent of the last time we played them, which was in the Calumet Invitational semifinal. Their one big hitter got a little flustered and the whole team followed suit. The girls built the lead slowly throughout the game. Holly came up big in this one, with at least three kills and an ace. Amanda F. got a kill early and Kassie closed it out with an ace

On to bracket play tomorrow, to see if we can extend the streak of winning this one to three years in a row.

Another tough one

The girls traveled north to Crossroads' home gym for the third meeting between the Crusaders and the Patriots on Friday night, and while the outcome was the same, this game was different than the first two. The Patriots controlled the first meeting between the two teams. In the second match, the championship game of the Calumet Invitational, was tightly contested and extremely well played, with some spectacular play, especially defensively. This most recent contest was more signified by mistakes. Neither team played as well as they did the week before. There certainly were some excellent play, but there was less of that and more unforced errors that the previous meeting. This game was also one of streaks. Momentum was the name of the game on this night.

As the game was played in Illinois, the game was best-of-three, all three played to twenty-five. The first game was completely controlled by CCS. Early on it was Calumet kills, but our fifth point was from a Crossroads hitting error, which was the first of many in that game. By the time it was 18-5, Crossroads had hit six balls into the net. They finally started hitting it over at 22-6 and scored five in a row, but Faith got a dink down, and then after one more Crossroads kill, Taylor put one down and Crossroads hit their eighth one into the net, giving CCS the game 25-12.

Game two seemed to be more of the same, though Crossroads' setter started throwing over the second hit to great effect. Despite several balls hitting the floor in the middle of the defense, the Patriots gradually built the lead, and after an Ally ace the lead was 20-12. What ensued wasn't a LGFS; it was more a LGM (late-game meltdown).  Actually the teams traded points and after a Rebekah kill it was 21-13. THEN things really fell apart. Kill, hitting error, dink, hitting error (out as we were trying to hit around their block), block, hitting error, dink, ace. 21-21. On a scramble, Ally pushed a ball back to the corner which Crossroads couldn't return. This did NOT turn things around. Three straight sloppy defensive plays put Crossroads one point away from an amazing comeback, and they finished it on the next point with an ace that we should have gotten up, but we seemed to be shell-shocked at this point. 25-22 Crossroads.

Early in game three the two big hitters, Annika from Crossroads and Faith, began trading kills. The teams also traded errors and so the game was close. Crossroads hit one out which gave us our first two-point lead at 10-8. We scored another to make it three; shortly thereafter, we made three unforced errors in a row and it was 12-12. We got the next three, capped by a big hit by Faith on an overpass. At 18-15 CCS committed four errors in a row, three on bad hits, and Crossroads led by one. Ally got us back on track with a kill, which Holly followed with an ace. Lauren followed with a beautiful block, then Crossroads hit one out in a volley in which we blocked a huge hit by Annika. Taylor joined in the fun with a block of her own, and it was 23-19. A CCS hitting error was followed by a dink kill by Ally, then one more big hit by Annika and Lauren finally ended it with a kill.

Because of the errors, this game wasn't as entertaining as the last time we met. There weren't the incredible defensive plays that we saw in the previous game. But it was exciting and tense, and I think we're a little bit thankful that we won't see them again this year. Tuesday we visit Community (formerly Ridgewood) in their new home, and then the Quentin Road tournament this upcoming weekend. Maranatha, Arthur, Saline and a new team, Faith Christian from Wilmot, Ohio should be our toughest competition.