First trophy in Lindesberg..

This weekends tournament was suppose to be in Norway, then we changed it to Denmark and then on Thursday evening we ended up deciding to play Knallecuppen in Borås.
Plans changed on us several times and every time it was without our own influence, but at the end of the day we learned how to roll with the punches and got the best out of it.

Friday we played 3 sets against Engelholm. We drove down there(5.5 hours) and played at 15.30. We lost the match 2-1 to a well organized and tough serving Engelholm team who looks like being the team to beat if we want to go all the way this year.. It is still early to say anything for sure, but they look strong this early.

After the match we drove to Borås which was about 3 hours north and on the way we needed to pick up Josephine(setter) in blablabla city ;0) where she would be arriving with the train.. Check this out – her train had hit a MOOSE on the way and was thereby delayed for 2.5 hours.. A f..in MOOSE.. That made me think of my old team in Lyngby and all the amazing times I’ve shared with those guys…!

We got her picked up and headed for Borås where the girls checked in to a small apartment complex while Oskar and I shared 2m2 of space.. Talk about being VIP..

Day 1

Saturday we played Oslo who we are playing in our Nordic Championship group and that match was over pretty fast. 2-0(25-6, 25-20) against a slow starting Norwegian team(which later showed a lot more quality than that morning match).

Next up was Örebro our local rivals and we lost the first set to a very engaged and loud team. We spend the time between 1st and 2nd set re-loading and talking some things through and came out unstoppable… 25-10 and 15-9(if I remember correctly) was the score..

3rd and last match of the day was against our friends from Falköping RIG and the young girls again showed how talented they are pushing us in an intense fight which we won 2-1. We won the 1st and 3rd set of the match but I don’t remember the scores at all.

Winner of the group, and a semifinal on Sunday against Hylte-Halmstad with 2 Polish stars and a newly acquired Brazilian outside was waiting for us Sunday.

The girls spend the evening with a player meeting and story-telling, while Oskar and I had a quite and loooong coach meeting with the coaches of Gislaved and Ljungby at the Grand Hotel.

Day 2:

We all came out Sunday morning with clear minds ready to take on Hylte-Halmstad and we made it very clear from the start of the match that we wanted to go to the final. A quick win in 2 sets and ready we were..

And who was waiting for us in the final – Falköping RIG who beat the English development team in their semifinal. This would be the 4th time we would play Falköping in just over a week. We expected a group of young girls who wanted this win more than anything and we tried to built a strong mentality to resist them, but we started the match with a lot of easy errors and that gave Falköping all the room they needed to unfold their potential, and we were never close to win the first set which finished 19-25 or so..
We made a few subs between the 2 sets and agreed to start over, but we were still not at all close to the level we have shown these past few weeks, and it took a bit of an attitude from me in a time-out before the team started to respond, and once we got started we never looked back.
High pressure in serving, stability in passing topped off with opportunistic and fast offence gave us a big win in the last 2 sets 25-10, 15-10… and our first gold medals as a team.

What did we take with us…

Other than the medals and the cup to bring back to a proud club president, I really feel we grew as a team this weekend. We had good talks with the full team trying to learn from each match we played, and the girls got a chance to work with the internal agreements on the team. The individual improvement for each player is not a high priority of mine right now. First of all the players all have a really high level already, but more importantly we have a lot of work to do as a team, and once the players are working for and with each other I believe the individual improvement will be much more efficient.
I have a really good group of girls again this year and the opportunities are endless with the sky as the limit… Chemistry off the court seems extremely well and has been focus for me from the beginning which so far seems to have paid off. On the court we are still finding each other, but with each ball we play and each point we win or lose, we take a big step in getting to where we want to be as a team and I am proud that the girls are working so hard as they are, and they are doing everything I ask of them which makes my job a real pleasure.

Tournament player in my book was Kaisa Wallin who quickly has taken a really important role on the team putting the S in stability when it comes to passing and defence AND a big A in aggression at the net where she along side Sam has been the teams most scoring players so far this preseason. Well done Kaisa and grats to the whole team.. not only for the title but also for the progression you have made as a team this weekend.

Michael

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant”