The girls had been putzing around. Sure, they’d won a couple of matches, and they’d lost one to a team that seemed to them, I’m sure, unbeatable. Still, even on the games they’d won, they’d made a bunch of silly mistakes. It just so happened that the other team made more. They played like beginners.

Not today.

This morning, they played their first game of the day, and it was business as usual. A few balls fell in the middle of two or three players because of a lack of communication and initiative. They flubbed a number of serves. They knocked some received serves off at angles that would have left Euclid scratching his head. They played like beginners. Still.

Then came time for their second match, and from the moment the other team began warming up, I began worrying. They were hitting very well, and digging those hits effectively. Their serves were sharp.

“Starting match 2,” I texted K. “Gonna be a tough one.”

They came out and transformed into a group of girls who knew what they were doing, who could dig hits like never before, hit like never before, block like never before — in short, play like never before.

“They have never played this well,” I texted.

They took the first game 25-21; they lost the second game 21-25. The third game (to 15 only) they were up 11-8 and then slipped up and let the other team tie it. The coach called a time out. Immediately afterward, the opponents scored two more. They only had two more points to score; our girls had to score double that. Coach called another timeout.

L went up to serve. One down. Two down. Three. Four — they’d won!

I can’t remember I’ve seen nine girls (one girl, unfortunately, went home sick earlier in the day) so very happy.

That win put them in the semifinals, where they faced a team of roughly the same strength as the one they’d just defeated. I thought, “We can do this — we can make it to the finals.” But unfortunately, the girls had just run out of gas by that time. They started making some of their old silly mistakes again. They were just worn out, and L, who’s been battling a cold all week, confided in me on the way home, “I felt like I was going to throw up that whole last game.”

“And yet you stuck it out, for the team.”

“Yeah, I guess.” A typical L reply.

So what did they learn this weekend? I think the coach put it best: “You girls learned how to win.” That’s easier said than done: it takes a lot of confidence to face a team you think will beat you and stare them down, then beat them down. And when things are falling apart, it takes a lot to keep pushing, even when the loss starts to look inevitable.

L, for her weekend of effort, got to sleep the whole way home, got freshly made rosół for dinner, and a 7:15 self-imposed bedtime.

In two weeks, we do it again…