Club Volleyball 2017 ... Taking This Show On The Road

Packing up the old mini-van for DaughterQuant's first club volleyball road trip this year. As I mentioned on @Starman's youth coaching thread, she's moved up to a "national" team, which means we're going to be hitting such garden spots as Fort Smith, Arkansas. (We're going to Minneapolis in late April, though, which we're all really excited about.)

Fort Smith is our destination this weekend. DaughterQuant's team will be down a middle/hitter (soccer injury), so we think she's going to be playing a lot. As the girl they'll be missing is a pretty big part of their offense, it'll be interesting to see whether DaughterQuant can make up some of the difference. She's definitely learned a few new tricks with this move up the club hierarchy ... more power, more aggressive swings, some lateral slides into hits ... so MommaQuant and I are pretty curious about what we'll see this weekend.

 

Sis-15, StarSis's oldest girl currently a HS sophomore, opted out of top-level club play this year for a twice-a-week (one practice, one tourney) "Regional" league that only plays in-state, so her longest trip is a two-hour drive.
Her development course is pretty well set at this point (she's not a college prospect, except maybe as a walk-on) and wasn't likely to change much whether she played with a big-time club, practicing 2-3 times a week and flying to tourneys.

With the basketball adventures of Twins A/B, fully chronicled on the kids basketball thread, Sis-7 starting her biddy basketball career, and Bro-17 on an academic recruiting tour sorting out scholie offers from Chicago, ND and most of the B1G schools, StarSis and StarHubby couldn't jump into that whirlwind.

 

Just got back a little while ago. Pretty much a "meh" tournament, but we really enjoyed Fort Smith. Team DQ finished second in its Saturday pool, losing out on 1st place in a three-setter to a top team out of Tulsa. Won a three-setter in the first round of the gold bracket this morning, then lost a three-setter in the second round.

Wouldn't have been in "meh" territory but for the fact that DaughterQuant didn't get on the court today. Not really sure what was up with that; she played a good bit yesterday in all three matches and seemed to do fine. Had a couple of blocks and kills, and she didn't make any mistakes -- or let anything egregious get past her -- that we could see. The team didn't fall off any when she was out there, either. Puzzling, but MommaQuant and I observe the "we're not the coach" rule.

The good middle/hitter was in action this weekend, with her knee heavily braced. She had her moments -- she really is good -- but there were also many instances of her injury-induced awkwardness gumming up the offense. She's scheduled for an MRI tomorrow, so who knows what roster churns may be aborning?

 

It's an outrage. You should call the newspaper.

 

Another weekend, pretty much the same result ... finished second in the pool but got drubbed by the top seed. Lost in three sets in the first round of the gold bracket, then won in two in the consolation match.

The weekend was somewhat of a better experience for DaughterQuant. She's been moved over to right-side hitter and is having to learn a completely different pattern of movement. During pool play, she played a reasonable amount in the first two matches and played very well, but she didn't touch the floor in the final match against the top seed. MommaQuant and I were dreading Sunday, assuming that she wouldn't play at all (just like last week in Arkansas). Instead, she trotted out there early on in the first set (which they won) and did fine. She didn't play in the second (a loss) or the tiebreaker. In the consolation match, she played in both sets, as the coach seemed to be trying some new things.

The poor coach, all of 23 or 24, seems pretty exasperated with the team. Her strong players really, really tighten up against quality competition. Of course some of it has to do with how you're being challenged, but I don't think the team across the net has that much to do with whether your setter double-hits or your libero starts hitting serves into the net.

 

Team DaughterQuant has moved steadily up the regional rankings since early March, winning one tournament -- this was a dinky little one, to be sure -- and playing pretty well in a couple of others. They've secured a berth in the regional championships -- DaughterQuant's never been on a team that qualified for those -- and last weekend finished 29th (out of 160) in a national qualifier in Dallas. DaughterQuant's been playing fine as one of the two right-side hitters and seems to be impressing her school-team coach during drills with all the new tricks she's learned.

Although team DQ, currently ranked 50th regionally and 311th nationally, is a nice team, it's not quite capable of competing closely with the really good ones. There's not a lot of kill potential on the front line, and absolutely none of the players is anything better than serviceable at serve receive. They handle teams ranked (regionally) in the 30+ range quite nicely, but against the top 20 types, those weaknesses are fatal.

They'll be in action this weekend in Minneapolis at the Northern Lights national qualifier (held downtown at the convention center). MommaQuant, DaughterQuant and I will likely be taking in a Twins game on Thursday afternoon (we're staying downtown). Any tourist/restaurant/bar tips anybody has, let me know ...

 

Too bad Nye's is long gone. Daughter Quant will just have to imagine The World's Most Dangerous Polka Band.

 

Team DQ ran up against -- and lost in straight sets to -- the eventual tournament winner in the first match in Minneapolis. With victories in their next two matches, though, our girls moved into the gold-medal-qualifying pools on Saturday. There, they lost in straight sets to a team from our region that they'd beaten in straight sets two weeks ago in Dallas. They then lost in a tie-breaker to the eventual tournament runner-up, a highly ranked team out of Minnesota. With a victory over a "meh" team from Chicago, however, Team DQ nevertheless had a chance to get into a three-team playoff for the gold-medal bracket. All they needed was the team from our region to beat the team from Minnesota, and when that team won the first set and then jumped out to a 19-14 lead in the second, things looked good. Somehow, however, the Minnesota team fought back to win that set, then came from behind in the tie-breaker to win 15-13. With that, Team DQ finished third in the pool. Was probably just as well, as they would have faced one, possibly two, tiebreaking sets, followed by, possibly, a first-round gold-bracket game an hour later. The girls, having already played three tough matches that day, had little left in the tank.

In Sunday's bronze bracket -- Team DQ was guaranteed, at worst, a top-36 finish for the tournament -- the team sleepily fell well behind in its first set, then stormed back from 19-14 down to win 25-22 and then 25-21 in the second. In their last match, they dicked around against a clearly overmatched team out of Minnesota before waking up and winning 25-23, 25-16. This put them in a 3-way tie for 25th in the 90-team tournament.

DaughterQuant had some really good moments -- there was about a 15-point stretch on Friday when the sets kept coming to her and she got kill after kill after kill -- and some kind of low ones. Her playing time is semi-contingent on how well setter B is doing. If B falls into a funk and gets pulled, DaughterQuant doesn't get out there much. Sunday morning, B fell immediately into a jag of double-hits and both MommaQuant and I sucked our breath in, knowing what likely was going to unfold. We've never said a word to a coach about playing time, but if she hadn't got out there Sunday, that streak was going to come to an end. It'd be one thing if she weren't any good and there was something really on the line. We could understand something like that. But that's not the case. DaughterQuant got her fair share on Saturday, when the gold bracket was still within reach, and both she and the team did just fine (in fact, the only sets the team won were those in which she was out there). It's very puzzling.

Nevertheless, in that second match B got settled down and DaughterQuant got back in there. Toward the end of that match, when the opposition had largely given up (the score was something like 21-12), I was silently rooting for it to make a bit of a charge -- at least a side-out or two -- so DaughterQuant could rotate back in. It did and she did, and the match ended with her on the court. I sprinted my fat ass back to the hotel and got checked out with two minutes to spare.

 

Club sports is very schizophrenic. The coaches constantly harp about team attitude, unselfishness, all that good stuff, but underneath it all, everybody is playing for themselves, the college scholarship or the place on the varsity they're all chasing.

Whenever you're on the bench, you watch the kid who's playing in your place. When they do great, you're bummed, because you could be pushed farther down the bench; when they screw up, you're happy, because it makes you look more valuable.

Players who play good "team" styles -- passing guards, pick setters, rebounders, baseball/softball bunters and chop hitters, volleyball setters, they're all doing it because they think it makes them look good to coaches.

There's really no way around it.

As far as the teams are concerned, you usually remember if the team is really good or really bad, but usually not much in between.

And really, even though all the coaches and team organizers harp on the team concept and winning attitude and all that, they also instill a professional, business as usual attitude when you win one game, lose the next, then move on to the next game. Nobody sits around after club games crying after a loss.

Unless it's literally the last games of the season, as a coach, you don't want the team getting emotionally crushed by a loss, because if they do, it's hard to avoid going into a tailspin. So 30 seconds after a loss, you gotta say, "oh well, win the next one."

 

At the grocery store on Monday my wife ran into a mom from one of the younger teams, from the same club, that was in Minneapolis. They were commiserating about this and that, and the subject of playing time came up. This woman, a very demure, proper, suburban mom, says, "Yeah, FC." My wife looked at her quizzically. "Fucking club."

 

Tomorrow afternoon Team DQ will close out its season in the silver-medal bracket of the regional championships. A very, very crazy day of pool play today. Seeded 3rd in its pool, Team DQ got stomped by a top-level team, the overall 8th seed, in its first match. The match against the pool's second seed, however, was one the girls had been looking forward to. That team had won in a close tiebreaker in Dallas a few weeks ago, and both the players and the parents thought this was a pretty juicy opportunity. Beat this team, then take care of business against the 4th seed, and gold-medal bracket here we come, and merely making that bracket in this tournament would be a very nice way to end the season.

Against that 2nd-seeded team, ranked pretty highly in the region, Team DQ fell into a lull in the middle of the first set and found itself down 23-19. Somehow, however, our girls fought back and won 27-25 and then in the second got ahead early and stayed ahead to win 25-21. The girls were absolutely thrilled to avenge that earlier loss, but they needed to regain their composure, because they had to play the pool's 4th seed right away.

Well, regain their composure they didn't.

In the first set against that fourth seed, Team DQ had seven -- SEVEN! -- serve errors, coughed up a slim lead late and lost 25-21. They came to life in the second and blew that team away, 25-10, but the damage was done. Now they were dependent on the pool's top seed winning at least one set in the final match. It didn't. Against a team it should have handled easily, that team got swept, knocking Team DQ down to 3rd in the pool. That was the third time this season that Team DQ found itself depending on a higher seed to play to form in another match, and in none of those instances did it work out.

DaughterQuant played her ass off. The team's No. 2 middle got there long after the first match had begun, so DaughterQuant moved over to middle for that first match. She then switched over to right-side, which she's been learning this season, for the second and third matches. On the ride home she said she'd forgotten how tiring playing middle can be. When MommaQuant said, "But you play middle at school," DaughterQuant responded, "Yes, but that's not nearly as intense as this."

Will be interesting to see how (or if) some simmering team drama plays out tomorrow. The team's best front-line player is nevertheless the team's biggest drama queen. She's good, but she thinks she's way better than her teammates, and when she's not going well she likes to take it out on them. She's alienated pretty much every girl on the team, even the girl who's actually the team's best player, and now the coach is clued in. With little in the way for the team to accomplish tomorrow, it would absolutely not shock me to see this "delicate genius" riding the pine.

 

Your team sure loses a lot.
Why not throw some Latin their way?