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Dalton 2021 Day 1

Saturday 16 January 2021

It's a different tournament this year. There are fewer courts this year: five instead of eight. This means fewer teams in the building, so fewer players, fewer parents -- reduced risk, in short.

They won their first two games in straight sets. They didn't have much problem with either team.

As often happens, though, the third team was a different story. Our girls (and single boy -- long story) lost the first set something like 25-22. Not a devastating loss, but a loss nonetheless.

They started the second set strong and before we knew it, our team was up 19-12. "Surely this is a done deal." Nope. They ended up losing 26-24, which means in the second half of the game, they were consistently outscored 2-1.

It's a question of experience, of gelling together as a team. It's only their second tournament, and many of the points they lost were from silly, unforced errors. They'll weed those out with time, with some experience.

And the Boy got his soccer uniform for the spring season.

First Tournament 2021

Saturday 02 January 2021

The girls won the first four, lost the last.

A good start. They're not too humbled and yet their egos got a little check.

Perfection

Friday 16 October 2020

The girls pulled it off: a perfect season. They lost not a single set. And L had the championship-winning kill tonight.

Close Call

Monday 12 October 2020

The Girl's volleyball team finished the regular season with a perfect record. Beyond perfect -- not only did they win every match but the won them all in straight sets. Which is to say they lost not a single set. And most sets they won convincingly. Brutally.

Today was the semifinals of the year-end tournament.

Before the game, there was a special short recognition of the eighth-grade girls who would be leaving. "As you can see," said the coach, "they're the majority of the team." Next year will likely not see as many in the win column as this year. But it's still this year.

The girls made it straight to the semifinals due to their record, and they faced St. Mary's today. They won convincingly earlier this year in the regular season. And the first set today they won easily: 25-9. That's not just an easy win. That's a brutal beat-down. But the St. Mary's girls never let it get to them. They were enthusiastic and hard-working the entire set as the lead mounted and become the monster that it was.

In the second set, the Langston girls started getting sloppy, making some silly errors. Before we knew it, they were down by four, almost all the points coming from their own unforced errors. Still, I don't want to take anything away from the St. Mary's team: they were playing much better in the second set. Our girls cut the lead to one and then started slipping again. Cut the lead and then started slipping again. And then the unthinkable: set point.

Yet the girls rallied and kept their perfect record just that.

It would have been a great surprise for the St. Mary's girls to bump the big dogs off their perch (I just intentionally mixed those metaphors so thoroughly that you could serve them to James Bond).

"Did you hear? The Langston girls finally got taken down!"

"Really? By whom?"

But it was not meant to be, I suppose.

One more game -- the championship on Friday afternoon against Shannon Forest again. They almost took a set from the girls a couple of weeks ago, and in the 2019/2020 season, they took a set from the Langston girls each of the two matches they played. Including the championship.

In the evening, after dinner, the Boy and I worked on his scout project. We measured and cut all the boards, ready for assembly tomorrow.

Back to Normal

Tuesday 06 October 2020

Learning

Sunday 04 October 2020

"Hey, there's a grass volleyball tournament in town this weekend. Want to go play?" L asked.

"Sure," her best friend N replied.

That's how it started. So two good friends who both have a couple years' experience playing volleyball but no experience playing two-girl volleyball -- no experience at all, not just no experience playing together in pairs volleyball -- set out this morning to see how they'd do.

It was a learning experience, to say the least.

Not only did they not win a single set, their total points scored for six sets (54) didn't even average out to 10 points per game. To say they got their butts kicked is really quite an understatement.

It's not something she's used to in volleyball. Last year, her school's team won every single match and only dropped three or four sets the entire season. This year, with only two matches remaining, they haven't lost a single set. They are used to delivering the smackdown, not receiving it.

But it wasn't always like that either for the Girl. When she first started playing volleyball, she tried out for the school team in sixth grade and didn't make the cut. We put her in YMCA volleyball and her team didn't do well at all.

As a parent watching my daughter play volleyball, I always have some mixed emotions. During the last season, her team struggled mightily: they didn’t win a single match, if memory serves, and they only won a handful of sets. It was rough. Lots of frustration in the car after games.

“We won’t ever win.”

Several matches, they were swept, three sets to nothing. There was nothing immediately redeemable about that. I said what any parent would say: “You’re getting stronger.” “This is building character.” “This shows how tough you are, that you keep at it despite the challenges.” (Source)

Still, even then they weren't getting beaten brutally.

Today, they were. Completely outclassed. Completely and mercilessly beaten by girls who had much more experience than they do.

Point after point, set after set, game after game, they kept playing. They lost by scores like 21-7 and kept playing. They made silly mistakes and went for several points without actually earning a point but gaining points only from unforced errors and still, they kept playing.

I'm not sure when I was prouder of L.

As the morning progressed, they improved. They figured out some of the little strategic differences that pairs volleyball demands. They worked together more. Their game became a little more analytic. They grew.

What's more, when we asked the girls if they'd enjoyed it, they insisted they'd had fun. And I believe them. So a successful lesson on many levels.

Still Shooting

Tuesday 10 March 2020

The kids have grown positively obsessed with shooting in the backyard — the Boy, his bb gun; the Girl, her bow and arrow. They really have no interest in trading.

Today’s adventure: find the arrow that ricocheted off the fence post and soared into the wild. (Slight exaggeration: it didn’t go more than thirty feet away, and was never in danger of landing in a dangerous way.)

The Girl fired it; the Girl found it. I would have half-expected her to give up sooner than she did. She’s dealing with frustration better than she was a few years ago. But she loves jumping as much as she always has:

The discovery of the day: the bbs bounce right off the archery target.

We could pick them up and reuse them, just like the arrows…

Savannah, Day 2

Sunday 16 February 2020

Yesterday started poorly; it ended with a lithe of hope. We lost the first two games; we won the third game.

Today, we won our two matches and finished before lunch. Tomorrow, we play three more games and refereed one more. (I went for a walk around the venue while they ran the game.)

Why only two games today? Simple: it's a pay-to-play tournament, which means we had to stay in a hotel from a list provided by the tournament organizers, who get a kick-back from the hotels. It's in their best interest to stretch things out as much as possible: the longer we have to stay here, the more they make.

Sound like a mafia-type move to you? To me, too.

Savannah, Day 1

Saturday 15 February 2020

It seems we have to start with a bang or a whimper. Our last tournament, two weeks ago, started with a bang: we won the first four matches and got second place in the gold bracket. (Does that mean we got silver? No. Why not? I don't know -- I don't even have the slightest idea how brackets are determined: it seems to be a mysterious mixture of matches won, sets won, and point differentials.) It only stands to reason, then, that we should start this tournament with a whimper: we lost the first two matches in straight sets (despite being up 16-6 at the start of the first set of the first match) and looked like we were on track to lose the first set of the third match until the girls decided finally to start communicating a little and stop playing Y ball (no offense to the YMCA).

I believe the team we beat in the final match lost all three of their matches. It looked for a while like that might be us. In a four-team bracket, I suppose there's a fairly substantial statistical possibility of this happening on a fairly regular basis depending on the skill spread of the various teams. In short, someone on days like today has to lose them all. I'm glad it's not us, but I know also how that must hurt to be the other team.

After the games and some rest, it was time for some dinner. Of course, being this near the beach, we couldn't miss the opportunity to walk on the beach for at least ten minutes.

And being this near the ocean, we couldn't not go out for seafood.

Dalton Day 2

Sunday 19 January 2020

Today was a story told in two scores:

Our first match was against a team from our own club. They were the premier team -- the best, in theory, of our club's players.

We lost the first set 18-25. We'd been up by about five but lost the momentum and the set. We started out the same in the second set, and we managed to hold them off to the end.

The girls were completely ecstatic. Such joy. Third set -- the momentum was, theoretically, theirs. And then they decided not to play but instead to go out on the street, pick ten random girls, throw some jerseys on them, and ask them to play. That's what it seemed like, anyway, for the other team won trounced them in final set 15-2.

That's okay -- we were still in it. We headed over to play a second match of the day against another team who'd also lost their first match. It should have been a match. It was, instead, more of the same:

They lost the first two sets by ridiculous amounts. Eye-popping differences in the score. It was if they'd reverted to their very first time batting the ball around.

The coach's view: "We've got to get you girls to where you can play two days!"