Facials

     Tonight, we had a really good practice. Our main focuses were on serve receive and attacking (specifically our wing attackers). This was great because these were two of our bigger weaknesses from the match on Saturday. The only bad part was that one of our outside hitters wasn’t at practice tonight. She has a 2-year-old daughter and couldn’t get a babysitter. A lot of the drills that we did had requirements that the first two balls had to go to the outside or rightside. This gave our wing attackers a lot more opportunities. They also had to attack against a well-formed block since the middle attack was not being set. The pace of practice was also very high. Everyone kept the energy high throughout the whole practice, which was really nice to see. I was very happy with the whole practice tonight!

     The interesting part of practice tonight was that there were 3 facials that occurred! I am (sorta haha) happy to say that it was not I this time that was knocking people to the ground. The first facial came during our hitting warm-up.  We call it “in spike”. On each side of the net, there is a setter, a libero passing, and a line of hitters hitting just a normal outside set. One of the girls hit one of the liberos smack on the side of the face. She went down to ground. She said her next was hurting so they got her ice. She didn’t do anything for the rest of practice. The next girl to get in the face was while playing 6-on-6. Someone hit the ball. Both the middle back and right back went for the ball. The middle back got a piece of it, but it was shanked right into the right back’s face! She also fell to the ground and stayed there. Our coach told us to start peppering. She lay on the ground for about 2 minutes before getting up, but she continued to play for the rest of the practice. And now for the third and final facial! Spoiler alert, I get hit in the face! I was playing middle back defense, and the other team’s outside hitter was attacking. I could not see the hitter so I relaxed in my defensive position waiting to run down a touch off the block. That is not what happened. Somehow, she hit a line drive square at my nose! I did not fall to the ground or quit playing. I had the natural reaction of my eyes watering from getting hit in the nose, but I said let’s keep playing! Truthfully, I was just upset because I actually had a pretty decent up (off of my face of course), but no one went after it!!!