A little perspective

It's remarkable what a little time and a couple of wins can do.

After much hand-wringing about what could be done to change things after losses in both morning matches at the Lafayette Central Catholic Volleyball Invitational on Saturday, the girls came out roaring in the afternoon, defeating the Times preseason #3 Andrean 59ers in two games, then rolling over the Rockville Rox in the fifth place game.

The team did have times where their play broke down in those earlier matches, but they did take the first set in each match, and did not look overmatched in the sets they lost, with the exception of the third game against West Lafayette. They ended up winning six sets and losing four on the day, and I believe that if a couple of points had gone our way, we could have been playing for the championship. Considering that the powerhouse team of the last couple years couldn't win this tournament, the only tournament they didn't win, I think this year's version did pretty well.

I will just give a quick overview of the games on Tuesday and Friday. I walked into Quentin Road's gym just as the host Eagles will wrapping up a second set win over the Patriots. I talked to a couple of parents that told me that we soundly beat them the first game, but we had trouble getting the ball down in the second. I was able to watch the third game, which the girls won with a little trouble (the  third game being the final one because they play best-of-three game matches in Illinois). Quentin Road at times gives us a little trouble in their gym. Three years ago they pushed us to three games and the strong 2006 team suffered their only regular season loss at QR. The Schaumburg Conquerors followed, but they were the conquerees this night. CCS jumped out to a 9-1 lead and never looked back in a 25-14 opening-set victory. Schamburg started much stronger in the second, only trailing 9-6 at one point. It was then that the Patriots started finding holes with dinks, Schaumburg got flustered, and Calumet outscored them 16-4 to win game two, 25-10.

Friday night was an early game against Community Baptist of South Bend, our first home game. Our JV played them last year, but they wanted the varsity this year. They didn't look like much in warmups, but, as it often is, warmups were misleading. The strength of the Cougars, at least this night, is blocking. I counted at least eight blocks against us in the match, many of the dramatic variety. However, the rest of their game was not as good, especially their serve receive, evidenced by our nineteen aces. Game one saw the Patriots jumping out to an early lead and holding it through to a 25-14 victory. The score was close in set two, the Cougars even leading 5-3, but after a couple of CB hitting error, our girls started hitting and acing and soon it was 17-7, CCS. The Patriots maintained that lead and won 25-15. The Patriots started even slower in the third game. The game was tied at 7, and CCS only led 15-12 when Cassie served several aces and Ally gave the Cougars some of their own medicine, blocking two CB attacks. Community didn't score again and it was game, set and match, 25-12. CCS.

West Lafayette was our first opponent in the tournament, a public school with more than 1000 students. They were big, very big. The teams exchanged kills and errors early on. An Ally kill tied it at nine, but then CCS committed a series of errors which WL followed with kills and aces, leading to a 12-5 run and a 21-14 WL lead. After WL hit one into the net then went into the net, and an Ally kill made it 21-17. Olivia followed with two kills after a WL point, then after each team had a net violation, scored another kill. Each team made a hitting error and it was 24-22, WL. Ally scored on a kill, they hit one out, Ally hit a hard ball flat-footed which they couldn't return, and Stephanie capped off the comeback with kill, giving the Patriots game one, 26-24. We got the early lead in the second game, 4-0, but WL came right back and tied it, then went ahead. We went back up 10-7, but no team had lead greater than two the rest of the game. at 23-23, Ally made nice dink off a scramble. 24-23, CCS. Wait! After a WL player complained, the down ref called Ally in the net. Wow. Olivia scored the next point on a spike. We then alternated kills with errors, until at 27-26, WL scored an ace and it was on to game three. The Patriots were on their heels the entire game, making a lot of errors. CCS was down 9-2 at one point before they slowed WL a bit, but they didn't make any headway, just kept the deficit from getting much bigger and lost the set 15-6 and the match.

Immediately following was the Patriots' second game, this one against Loogootee, our opponent in the championship game last year. CCS started very strong in the first game leading 8-4 and 10-5. Loogootee, also a very tall team, really got their offense going, rattling off a series of kills in a 11-0 run. Our hitting then picked and the Lions made a few errors and the girls got back into it, going ahead again at 21-20. At 23-23, Olivia put one down. On game point, Ally read a slide, slid over herself and absolutely stuffed one of Loogootee's six-footers to win the game. Quite a play. Calumet fell behind early in game two, then caught up, then fell behind again. At 13-11, Lions, the Patriots made three very sloppy unforced errors. We cleaned it up after that, but the damage was done. The Lions kept up their hitting and gradually added to the lead, winning 25-17. A few points into game three, an Ally block put us up 3-1, but Loogootee caught us at four and we never led again. The girls kept it close, pulling to within one at 13-12 on an Ally kill, but the Lions scored the last two to take the match.

Andrean was the other team in our pool. They had split with Loogootee and WL, so they looked pretty good. Early on, it was Andrean errors and Ally kills and a block leading to a 6-3 lead. Four 59er kills in a row gave them the lead. Shortly thereafter, the Patriots started getting kills from everyone. Stephanie, Faith, Mandi, and even Kaylie from the back row got kills in the stretch that gave us a 13-9 lead. Andrean caught the Patriots on a questionable call on an Ally dink. Stephanie got a kill and Cassie served an ace, and the Patriots never trailed again. Andrean made a lot of mistakes, we blocked better and hit well, and a Faith dink kill was the winning point in opening 25-18 win. Their errors and our solid offensive play (the defense was consistent most of the day; the offense was up and down) led to an 8-3 lead and an Andrean timeout. The 59ers gradually got closer as we made a lot of hitting errors, eventually evening up the game after two CCS errors. At 18-17, CCS, Andrean went into the net twice on kill attempts to give the Patriots a three-point lead. Andrean then scored two in a row, but Stephanie put one down and Ally stuffed an Andrean spike attempt. The teams exchanged points, but Olivia finished it off with a kill. 25-22, CCS.

This put us into the fifth place game. We thought our pool was significantly tougher, and the score of that game seemed to support that. I wasn't able to stay for that game, but the score told the story: 25-6, 25-11, CCS over the Rockville Rox.

The girls are now 9-2 on the season. Last year we were 10-1 through eleven matches. The team was 26-4 in games to this point last year; this year they are 22-6. Considering the turnover, this season is going very well, higher than expectations, at least mine. No matches this week, but another tough tournament looms on Saturday, at Kankakee Valley. See you there.