Tournament in Lindesberg and Nordic Championship

This past weekend we played our 2nd preseason tournament and this time at home in the great new Lindesberg Arena. Results on www.lindesbergvolley.se

Teams participating were: Stavanger(NOR), Falköping RIG(SWE), Sollentuna(SWE) and Lindesberg(SWE).

We opened the weekend with a friendly match against Stavanger on their night of arrival and it pretty fast became clear that they hadn’t gotten the 6 hour drive out of their legs. We won easily 3-0 in less than 1 hour.

Saturday the tournament started and we opened against Stavanger… This morning Stavanger came with the intention of paying back for their loss the night before. They served tougher and put more pressure on our hitters with great blocking, but the girls showed true toughness and pulled off a 2-0 win in 2 pretty close sets.
2nd match for us was against Falköping RIG and the young and very talented squad counting about 95% of the Swedish youth national team fought hard to compete, but in the long run we proved to be the better team looking at stability and discipline. Another 2-0 win for Linde.

3rd and last match Saturday was against Sollentuna and almost before the match got started it was over in a very clear 2-0 win. Both teams saved a couple of key players and that seemed to hurt Sollentuna more than it did us.

Group stage results:

Lindesberg 3 wins, 0 losses
Stavanger 2 wins, 1 loss
Falköping 1 win, 2 losses
Sollentuna 0 wins, 3 losses

1st place in the group stage of the tournament and we would be facing Sollentuna in the Semifinale Sunday morning.
We expected a tougher match up this time as Sollentuna lined up a stronger line up, but we stepped up to the task as competition got tougher and won 2-0 without struggle.

In the Final awaited Falköping RIG who beat Stavanger in a close and intense semifinal 2-1. A small upset by the young and talented squad, but to the story belongs the fact that Stavanger played without libero the entire tournament because she was away with the Finnish national team, and passing line proved to be what Stavanger struggled with the most this weekend.

We entered the final as favourites and after about 45 minutes the match was over with a 2-0 win. But the win did not come as easy as the first time we played them on Saturday. This time the young girls showed amazing ability to fight for every point, converting defensive plays into points and tough serving. 2nd set finished 27-25 after several long and intense rallies, and in this part of the game we lacked “coolness” and aggressiveness which resulted in too many safe serves and attacks. However, the girls came out with the win and we can’t really complain about that, but it is our intention to stay aggressive even when the score is 25-25.

Player of the tournament in my eyes was Klaudia Grelowska. She played her first matches as middle due to some injuries on our team and she played the tournament very impressively. Also Jeanette played a great tournament with passing at the level of last season and defence which kept the 50 – 70 people in the crowd on their toes most of the time.

What is next...

Next weekend we are off to Denmark to play a small tournament with Brøndby(DK), Gentofte(DK) and Svedala(SWE). This weeks practice will be with focus on technique and resting so we are all ready for the 2nd half of preseason.
So far we are satisfied with our level and accomplishments in the 2 tournaments we have played, but have a long ways to go before season begins and before the 1st big test which will be Nordic Championship November 5th – 7th.

Our group in Nordic Championship will be played in Stavanger and it looks like this:

Lindesberg(SWE)
Stavanger(NOR)
Oslo(NOR)
Fortuna-Odense(DEN)

It will be exciting to play Fortuna(my team from last year) and also a rematch against Stavanger is something we look forward to.

Michael

“Your eyes can’t hit what your eyes can’t see, move like a butterfly and sting like a Bee”