MIDD goes 2-1 at NESCAC Quad in Maine

What a trip. It was raining hard a good bit of the way over, and was miserable, but nothing was stopping us on our quest to knock off Bowdoin, and get our Maine weekend off to a good start. We came out ready to play, and took a very tight first game 26-24. The second game was a rare moment in sports that we hope we never repeat. We got stuck in one rotation and that was the game. We made every error in the book, and they kept the pressure on. It was awful.

We rebounded well after that fiasco, and despite losing the 3rd set, it was again very tightly contested. The 4th game opened with us fighting for every point again, and we opened up a small lead, and finished out that game ahead by 6 points to force a deciding 5th game. We showed a lot of heart and good play to force that fifth game, and once again came out firing away, and took a commanding lead of a few points for most of the 5th. We reached the pinnacle of 14-10, and then seemed to freeze up a bit. We only needed one little point to finish them off, but we seemed to be waiting for them to make the mistake, instead of us making the play to end it. Well, needless to say, they didn't make the mistake, and we didn't make the play, and they made the improbable comeback at that point to win 17-15. It was devastating, there's no other way to describe it. We did some great things, but they were hard to even remember after losing that way.

Somehow, we had to regroup for our matches the next day. Regroup we did, although, it was a bit of a struggle to get going as we dropped the first set to Bates, who hadn't won a Conference Match all season. We did regroup after that, and pulled ahead to take the next three sets, but it was pretty close most of the way. We struggled a bit to get things going, and connecting, and it just seemed that we were making it hard on ourselves. Nothing comes easy some times, but we plowed through, and took complete control in the last set against Bates, and things started to look up again.

Colby, however, proved to be a tenacious team to start out, after having taken Amherst to 5 games the night before, they were ready to battle for a win. They took an early lead on us, and kept it most of the first game. We started to get back on track with our complete game, and surged ahead to win 25-20. After that, it was all us. We got back in a groove, and they had no answer for MJ, who had 15 kills, no errors on 29 swings. Amy and Jane each had 6 kills, and Maddie and Elissa had 4, and 3 kills. We blocked very well as a team, which is always nice to see, and Elissa, Piper and MJ all had 4, and Maddie and Julia and Amy all had 3 blocks. Caitlin again led the defense with 17 digs, while Julia and Jane added 10, and 6.

We're on the road all this week, it seems. We have Plymouth State on Wednesday, and the Hall of Fame this weekend at Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges where we'll play Wellesley, MIT, and Springfield.