Saturday, October 11, 2008

Colby-Sawyer Out-Nudges Panthers in 5 Sets

We got off to a very slow start over in New London, NH. The fact that half of my van wasn't even sure if we were headed to NY, or NH , or maybe even CT may have contributed to that slow start?! It was a fairly messy game to start out with, both ways, but they had the advantage blocking us for sure. We started to settle down a little in the 2nd set, but still were somewhat out of sorts. We put Caroline in for Jane, and that gave us a lift, but we still weren't quite clicking. Kate had been doing a nice job blocking and hitting, but we wanted to get Jane back in the game, so we put her at Right Side, and left Caroline to contend with the big block that had somewhat stymied us early on. Caroline started to get it all figured out and tipped that big block a few times, ripped a couple line, and hard cross, and also found the seam between the blockers and really started to get us going.

After narrowly capturing the 3rd set to prolong the match, we handily beat them in the 4th, setting up the 5th and deciding set. They came out stronger than we did, and we couldn't quite set the block such that our defense was solid behind it, and the game winner ended up being a hit from the middle that had hurt us all night. That being said, we had dug ourselves a hole and had gotten behind by about 4 points before Caroline put three balls down in a row to get us right back in the match! All in all, it was a good match for the last three sets, but getting off to that slow start really hurt us in the long run. Colby-Sawyer is a good team, but no better than what we have left to face in our own Conference, starting with Tufts on Sunday! We're hoping to keep learning from each match, and each day in practice so that we keep progressing day by day to be peaking at the end of the season. Stay tuned!

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