MIDD Falls to NESCAC Leader Tufts in 4 Sets

Oct Break is on, and campus had thinned out as Tufts traveled to MIDD for the Conference match on Sunday. Tufts was coming off a 3 set sweep of Amherst on Saturday night, and we felt ready for whatever game they brought on Sunday. We may have been too amped up for the match, as we were tight to start off with and amidst serving out several times, we also were over-passing and making unforced errors. We settled in nicely in the 2nd set to take that one 25-20, and we started to play OUR game. However, we once again dug ourselves a hole in the 3rd, but were making a great comeback sitting on set point, but came up a point shy of tying it at 24 to lose 23-25. The momentum had definitely shifted in our favor, and we had made a couple of strategic adjustments that we felt were helping, and had gained an 18-14 edge at one point in the 4th set. That lead would slip away, and see us only score 3 more points down the stretch to lose that deciding set 21-25.

We are doing a lot of great things, but we need to string them together into a whole match. There will always be errors, and mistakes, but we're trying to focus on how we react to those errors, and getting in positions where we are able to stop runs by the other team a little sooner, so that they maybe only get 2-3 points at a time, not 4-5. They are a good team, but we feel like if we can improve on a couple of key areas, and keep plugging away at our strengths, then we should be where we want to be heading into the last half of our Conference play. We will also welcome Reisa back to the team when we start practice again on Tuesday after being away to deal with a family matter, and will hopefully get Whitney back in practice gear the following week. That will put us at full strength again for both practice and matches, which will be nice for all of us.