First Loss

Yesterday we had an away game in Roma against one of the 2nd place teams (we are in first and there are about 5 teams tied for second). We were told the whole week of practice this team is going to be difficult and have a tall outside. Well they were right, this team was very good, I would say we were very evenly matched, they definitely had better ball control then we did, which helps a lot on offense. But we lost the first two sets and it was not pretty at all. We decided to show up in the 3rd and 4th sets and won very close sets, both coming from far behind and winning! It showed the fight that our team can have and how well we can play when we really have the heart and will to do that, now I just have to figure out a way to tell them that....ha, google translate? Anyways, after winning the 4th set you could see that the other team was very down and had no momentum, they even took out there two best players, but they also had really good players to replace them with. We lost the 5th and final set due to several mistakes on our side.
Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call and people will start working a little harder to become a little better at things in practice. Let me just say, when you are hiding your libero and your middle blocker has to step in on serve receive there could be a problem....After talking to Lynnea we have come to the conclusion that things that we pick up on in the matches, they may not (and by may not, I mean don't), which makes it very difficult for us to share with them, and also very frustrating because we are thinking if we are seeing it, isn't everyone else? ummm NO.
But oh well, we are still in first because we only have one loss and we go by points, I guess. Which means, if you win 3 games to 0 you get 3 points, if you win 3-1 you get 3 points and the other team gets 1, if you win 3-2 then you get 3 points and the other team gets 2. So because we lost in 5 games we got 2 points, which means we really only missed out on getting 1 more point, and we were very far ahead of the other teams because of our record....so if we are able to pick up our game and improve then we will be alright! Sometimes the only way to learn about your weaknesses are having them exposed by another team.

Italian word/phrase of the day: sta qua  "is here" I heard one of my teammates give that answer when our coach asked how here knee was doing....I LOVED IT!

blocking