We did loose this match, but we fought very hard and had some great performances to stay in this match and win the first game. In the first game we were led with hitting by Marc G. who had 3 hits for kill and Mike P. who registered a hit for kill along with a block for a point! Net play was very strong although we were loosing 23 - 15 when Alex H. came up to serve. Alex gets high praise as he served up a classic run of 10 serves of which 7 were for ace! Against the best team that we faced all year so far, this was a great accomplishment and at least the last 4 serves were jump serves and all were very powerfully hit. We won that game 25 - 23. The other boys played superbly behind Alex's serving at that point as we still had 3 points to get that were volleyed out, or it might have spelled a lost game for us. Phenominal play by all as they knew they were under pressure.
In the second game we ended up loosing 25 - 18, but it was very close for most of the game. After each team had served 6 times each, it was 8-8. Each team had only 2 serves that were not sided-out by the other team! After the second round of serving for both teams (6 more servers for each side) it was still very close at 15-20 in favor of SS P&P. The difference was that we failed to side-out 6 of their serves and they only missed on 2 of ours! In reality we had probably out-played them at this point as 5 of our side outs were a result of missed serves at this point which was unfortunate as we only missed 3 the entire first game. It got tough as 3 more servers for each side and the same result, each time the other team sided-out the serving team so now it was 18-23 and our back was against the wall! SS P&P did make their next 2 serves to finish out the game! A very close game all the way through. Serving was led by Spenser H. and Jake C. with 3 each and neither had a missed serve nor did Mike P. on his two serves. Both Marc G. and Mike P. recorded a successful block. Mike P. led the team with 2 hits for kill while Marc G. chipped in 1 hit for kill. Again, net play was strong as was passing and digging of hits that came back at us.
We also lost the third game at 25-11 to cost us this match. We only missed 1 serve, but only had 7 serve rotations as we just did not get into sync and get this team sided out and it appeared that they had gained some momentum and were serving a little harder. We gave up a 9 serve run to their third server, runs of 3 to their 5th, 7th and 8th servers and that sealed the match for us. We did not do the same job of passing into position to hit and played off our heels a little bit this game as we only recorded 1 hit for kill and 1 block this game. It's tough to beat a team this good if you don't pass and get the ball hit back at them as they were surely hitting the ball back at us 75% of the time.
Overall, the boys played very hard and in reality, stayed right with them in volleying the 2nd game, we just didn't get on a run and recover from the 5 missed serves, but they learned a lot this match and should be very proud of their efforts and have much faith in themselves. As I only played the starting 6 all the way, setting was evenly shared by Mike S. and Jake C. for all of the games. I do not have the passing and full hitting results to record at this time, but here are the statistics that I do have for this match.
