Last team standing...

So this weekend we had a tournament in Stockholm(Sollentuna) and it was our last tournament in our preseason...

The team has at this moment played 63 sets in 19 matches against 12 different opponents over the last month. No surprise that the girls are tired at and they have been awaiting the next 2 free weekends with great excitement.

Now the tournament…

We played Sollentuna on Friday night and that match was over in 3 fast sets. Sollentuna has improved a lot since the first 2 times we played against them, and after the match we talked about the importance of our own continues development as a team and later each individual on the team..

For the first and only time the girls got to stay at a Hotel for the weekend.. A well deserved price after a lot of gym floors, airbeds and self cooking.. Scandic Hotel took care of us with the perfect breakfast – sorry there were no bacon Sam..!

Saturday after the amazing breakfast and a very nice lunch at Sollentuna’s new Arena, we played against Katrineholm who are the reigning Swedish Champions. A match we had looked forward to for a while and the intensity was there from the beginning.
We won the first 2 sets fairly safe but in the 3rd set it seemed like Katrineholm turned it up a bit and we struggled for some time with our passing especially. Down 20-14 and the last time-out taken all there was left to do was to wait for the girls to respond – so they did… In a nerve wrecking finish we rallied to catch them at 24-24 and went past them 26-24 to make it a 3-0 win.. Fantastic win for so many reasons which I will not bore you with now, but to me and the girls the way we came back and the attitude the girls showed at the end meant the world to us. ALMOST a reminder of several play-off games from last season..

Last match of the tournament was set for Sunday against Brøndby, but we had agreed to play a friendly match against them on Saturday night as well to make the trip worth their while and to take advantage of the opportunity to play against a foreign team 2 times now they were here.
We won the friendly match 2-1 with some different line-ups on both sides, and besides the loss in the 3rd set we all felt good about our performance.

Sunday morning after another amazing breakfast we played the “real” match against Brøndby and this time we won it 3-0 without much trouble. Brøndby has an extremely high toplevel but they struggle a bit to stay up there for long at a time, and when they go down they fall deep. Especially passing was a problem for them throughout the game.


What did we take with us..?

4 matches played and 11-1 in set score. The pure result was more than satisfying but so was the knowledge we gained about our team and of course 2 of our competitors in the Swedish elitedivision.
We found out how vulnerable we are when our passing line is broken and we struggle to fix it fast enough.
We also learned(/confirmed what we already knew) that we have more than just 7 starters on this team, we can play pretty much any line-up and still put a very strong team on court.
We had a teambuilding weekend early in September where we talked about a couple of key words we thought should represent this team, and this weekend we saw that the work we have been doing so far is leading us in the right direction.


Recharge and reload…

This week we have 4 days off, 2 days of practice and 1 cup match against Orion from 2nd division. The next 2 weekends will be without volleyball for the girls. It is time to nurse family, friends and love ones and recharge batteries so that we are 100% ready both physically and mentally for our season opener against Hylte/Halmstad on October 16th.
I am very proud of the work the girls have done this preseason and sitting here now with the results we have gotten so far, I can’t help but be happy about all the hard work the club and I did over summer putting together this team. Finding the right girls, making sure everyone knew what they said yes to when they signed with the team and last but not least making sure everyone were ready to work their hardest for the team.

Many have had their doubts… people on and around the team and many more… doubts that we could put this team together, doubts that this small club could rise with such a challenge, doubts that a silly Dane and a group of 9 new players plus 2 “old” ones could get this off to a great start… Well many things can be said about doubt and one of them is that if you doubt that you can accomplish something you will accomplish nothing.. challenge your doubt with action.. you need to have confidence in your abilities and then be tough enough to follow through... We have shown that we are tough, we dare to follow through and as time has gone by our confidence has gone up..!

We know the season is long and we are ready to face the future we are presented with. We know we have far to go and only hard work will get us where we want to end up. 7 months is a lot of time..

Finally I would like to send a big THANK YOU to Morten Piil who chose to visit us in Stockholm this weekend and with his enthusiasm he made a big impression on a lot of the players there. Morten your passion for volleyball can’t be questioned and Jeanette and I thank you for making us feel a little special this weekend.

Michael

“The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.”