It’s been quite a while since I wrote about volleyball. In fact, it has been over a month since I wrote about our matches. I can sum it up in one word why I haven’t written about volleyball: losing. I hate losing so much! Anyone, who has ever seen me play volleyball or played against me or even had an argument with me, will know that I am super competitive. When the Illinois volleyball team would all get flu shots, I started a competition of who could keep their Band-Aid on the longest. I really really hate losing! Anyways, my team is 2-7 right now, losing the last 6 straight matches. I definitely wouldn’t say that everything has been bad when it comes to volleyball; it’s just that we haven’t been able to play great for a long enough time to get the W. This is our team’s first year in the Elitserien, the highest division in Sweden. There is a really big difference between this division and the division that they played in last year. Our biggest issue is giving away points/making errors. They have told me that last year they could make many errors but still win because the other teams would make even more errors. This is not the case in the Elitserien. I think we are getting better at keeping the ball in play, but we still have a way to go. Here is a little information about each of the previous matches that I have written about.
November 26th, we played Engelholms, which is the #1 team in the Elitserien. We lost to them 20-25 25-20 16-25 23-25. Now this sounds like we did really well, right? Well, we did play the best volleyball that we have played the whole time I have been in Sweden. This was also the most frustrating match I have played since I have been in Sweden. We were winning the 4th set 20-8 and 23-13 before losing 23-25. I was on the bench during this run. It looked like no one had the confidence to pass the ball or put the ball away, and that we were just waiting for them to make a mistake. They obviously didn’t make one. We played the best volleyball and the worst volleyball in the same set. To view match statistics, go to http://www.cupassist.com/pa/livescore/women/stats.php?year=2011&id=M_W11_26-1112.htm.
On December 4th, we lost to Falköping 16-25 23-25 11-25. This match we really struggled to pass the ball. In serve receive, we had a positive touch on the ball only 38% of the time. This is not good! Our serve receive struggled so much that then our hitters were worried about that and made a lot of hitting errors as well. We had 20 kills with 17 errors. To view match statistics, go to http://www.cupassist.com/pa/livescore/women/stats.php?year=2011&id=M_W11_33-1112.htm.
We took Sollentuna to 5 sets on December 10th losing 20-25 25-18 15-25 25-24 11-15. This match there wasn’t really any one thing that we did poorly. Our serve receive had a positive touch 71% of the time, and we had 49 kills with 19 errors. We just couldn’t get over the hump to actually win. We played alright, but just didn’t take care of all the little things like perfect passing on freeballs or coverage. To view match statistics, go to http://www.cupassist.com/pa/livescore/women/stats.php?year=2011&id=M_W11_38-1112.htm.
On December 17th, we lost to Katrineholm 10-25 12-25 17-25. I personally think that they are the best team in the league. They are in 2nd place after losing to Engelholms. They are tall! Every single girl was over 6 feet tall. They didn’t even bring their libero to the match, but still played great defense. The 3rd ball that I was in the match, I blocked their middle. It was an awesome block! The bad part was that I hyper-extended my left elbow doing this. It is feeling better now, but I had to take myself out of the match to get it wrapped. Having it wrapped definitely helped, but I was very hesitant to block again. I got a touch with my left hand again later in the match, and it hurt terribly! This loss was strictly that they were better than us. They really are a great team. I think we could have played better. We had more hitting errors than we had kills, but overall Katrineholm was just a better team than us. To view match statistics, go to http://www.cupassist.com/pa/livescore/women/stats.php?year=2011&id=M_W11_42-1112.htm.
I think everyone on the team is going to benefit from our week off! We have a lot of little injuries and sicknesses. We all definitely need and deserve a break. I am looking forward to the second half of the season. We are not satisfied with how the first half went. I think we will all come back from the break re-energized and ready to compete!
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