Game v Marienlyst

We played Marienlyst Sunday, and this was a game that I had been looking forward to for some time. Unfortunately though, I started coming down with something on Thursday, and I was really sick on Friday. I ended up laying in bed all day, running a fever yet being freezing cold at the same time, with a sore throat and headache to boot. I felt a little better Saturday, and by Sunday, luckily, I was well enough to play, but it would have to have been something major to keep me out of that game.

Marienlyst came in hooting and hollering like they usually do during warm-ups, and their Brazilian didn't manage to hit the roof, which I laughed at. He still hits harder than anyone on our team, but I thought it was a moral victory for us that he didn't hit the ceiling. I think our team felt confident going into the game. We knew we had a full line-up and we had had some good training that week. On the flip-side, Marienlyst looked a little over-confident, which is somewhat understandable after demolishing us in the previous meeting.

The first set started off great, we got points off blocks and counter-attacks, and took advantage of errors by Marienlyst. They missed a lot of serves in the early going and we sided out on the first ball pretty well, which was important. We opened up a lead of five points midway through the first set, and kept it until near the end. We had some trouble with service reception, and they were able to close the gap and eventually tie it up at 23-23. We had set point, but they were able to side out, and they ended up finishing us off for set point with a block, 24-26.

Despite losing a tough set and some momentum, I felt good going into the second set. We were playing well with the exception of a few points here and there, and I thought that we definitely could take it to them. Our middles were basically unstoppable in the first set, and I probably gave about 80% of the balls to them. The second set started off evenly, with the score being close most of the way, until we ran into a rough patch about a third of the way through. There was some miscommunication between me and Dennis, and then a little later we got stuck in a rotation where they ran off four or five points in a row, and suddenly Marienlyst had a five or six point lead. We managed a few points off our serve, but not enough to get back into the set, and we lost the second 20-25.

The third set started off a bit rough, and they opened up a 4-1 lead before we called a timeout. We settled back down and evened things up playing close most of the way. We had a few good runs of points off counter-attacks, including an amazing one-handed block by Kesse on the other middle. I also was finally able to cause some reception trouble for Marienlyst with my serve, something I hadn't been able to do all day, and had been frustrating me. Our middles continued to put nearly every ball away, but Marienlyst counter-attacked well and ended up taking the set 21-25.

This was definitely the best service reception game that we have had, despite the rough patches. With those moments excluded, I had nearly three options every time and was more than happy to feed the middles, who played great. It was nice to have Goat back, and I think our middles are one of our best advantages against other teams in the league. I can't remember a match I have played in that I set the middles so much. Normally when you run the middle so often they start getting two blockers, but that didn't happen much, and when it did, it didn't matter. They played really great I thought. That being said, I should have involved the outsides a bit more to help keep them in rhythm, but it's always hard as a setter to go away from someone who is so hot and winning so many balls. I was a bit disappointed with my physical performance; I felt a bit sluggish at times and like I didn't have my legs beneath me, which was frustrating.

I think that even though it was a disappointing loss, especially having had set point in the first, it was another positive step forward for the team. Even though it is completely cliche, we have gotten better each week, and that is really all you can ask of a team. We had some mental errors here and there, but they were less frequent then previous weeks. Our passing was also great, and much improved over previous weeks. I feel completely in sync with everyone in the reception offense and pretty good out of transition as well. As long as we keep building on these things we'll be fine.

We'll be missing three guys from the team for the next two weeks as they go to Copenhagen to play for the national team and the Olympic qualifiers for Denmark. This means we have another long break again until our next match, which is in three weeks against Hvidovre. It is frustrating to have such a long time off; we have only three matches in 8 weeks, so we will have to have some good training sessions and stay focused.