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.