So much good and still not enough...

After a tough week we just got back home from Finland and the 1st round of the N.C.C.

Let me say right away that we lost the final match against the home team Somero with 3-2. And due to a bad ball score, we finish last of the runner-ups and are therefore out of the tournament.

Sitting back with a lot of disapointment and thinking about how we could have done it differently, and I realize that there is nothing we could have changed. On paper we have an amazing team, and every day at practise we work to become better as a team, but to expect my players to beat a Finish top team is not really fair.
I do believe we have the level when things are floating, but under pressure we still struggle to find answers in passing and thereby offense.

On Saturday we won against Lindesberg from Sweden who has Crystal Barnes as a middle and none less than Marcie Hampton as outside. That win was amazing! We were all over them in the block, and our serves made it hard on their talented setter.

The win gave us a lot of confidens, but we failed to stay at that level in the match Sunday. The Finish team came with tough serving and we simply could not get stability in passing, and Dorthe was struggling to get our middles involved. We lost 25-13 after an 8-2 lead in the first game, and that says it all.

A 25-20 win in the second game didn't change matters a whole lot. We were still having trust issues in passing and defense, but Somero started making more errors too.

25-13 in third game and again we completely fell apart in our side-out.

The fourth game we finally found som answers, and a 23-15 lead ended with a 25-22 win. But the lost points in 1st and 3rd game, and the big lead we gave up in the 4th left us with only one thing to do to promote to the finals... Win the 5th game.

We started out awfull and never recovered. 1-6 was the score after we lead out with a side-out to make it 1-0 and then a serving error.
We changed sides at 4-8 and then got aces 2 times. It enden 15-7 and we finshed a 3-2 loss plus a 3-0 win with a ball score of -1.

A sad way to end a elseway perfect weekend with team bonding, team meeting etc., but in a tournament like this, you just can't give away games with a 10+ margin. We had plus 23 from our first match and still couldn't stay in it..


I am however, proud of the girls and the way they faught their way back in the match today. We have a lot of work to be done before we can call ourselves a team, but everyone is willing to do the work, and there are still a lot of matches to be played this season, with the Cup semifinal coming up in december, and 4 important league matches in November.

I am sorry that I am not able to bring news of victories, but I can promise you that the girls gave everything they had and on a different day things would have turned out our way.

Michael