VB4Y LIGHTNING U14

February 19, 2012. We had our first shut out of the season! The girls went undefeated in 13 sets.

We played a variety of teams which gave us the opportunity to run different line-ups. We fell behind in a few sets, but always made a strong come back. There were some great digs, blocks and kills. Our opponents made very few serving errors, so we had to earn each point. With a 173 errors on our part, and our opponents missing less than 10 serves total, we earned our 289 points. A big congratulations goes out to Bailey Jones for getting her over hand serve, and proving she can be a consistent server with 45 successful serves and only 4 miss serves. Our over all team serving improved with only a 14 % serve error rate. Attack errors are improving with a 16% attack error and improved kill rate of 20%. We need to continue working on our serve receive and transitioning so we can improve our giveaway balls and make successful kills. We had 59 free balls with four of those errors.

Our point leaders were:

#1 Ariel Walker = 51 points 29 aces, 14 kills, 6 back row kills

#8 Elaina Henneessee= 40 points -8 aces, 29 kills, 1 back row kill, 2 blocks

#16 Megan Monroe= 27 points - 11 aces and 16 kills

February 5, 2012 ODR U14 Tournament , Tied for first, no bracket, or playoff game-we get a coin toss s,11 1 po

Ariel Walker: 8 serving Aces, 22 attacking kills=30 points

Elaina Henneessee: 4 serving aces, 24 attacking kills, 2 blocks =30 points

Megan Monroe: 10 serving aces, 11 attack kills=21 points

Allie Plumlee: 4 serving aces, 13 attack kills, and 4 blocks=21 points

The girls had a great day at Tidewater Volleyball Center. There were only three teams, but we did play 8 sets in total. We won all four sets against Williamsburg Regional team, and split wins with Williamsburg National team. They did not let us have a play-off game so we tied with Williamsburg National with a 6-2 record. To decide on a winner they went to point differences and we lost by 1 point. You can see the rest of the results by clicking the team records and players stats.

Monument City Classic January 14,15,16, 2012

Congratulations to our top 3 stat point leaders: You can see the rest of the results by clicking the team records and players stats.

Elaina Henneessee : 19 serving aces, 44 attack kills, and 16 blocks=79 points Ariel Walker : 26 serving aces, and 43 attack kills =69 points

Megan Monroe: 11 serving aces, and 25 attack kills=36 points

Our 14’s team decided to change their name this year from “Fusion” to “Lightning.”They had their first tournament at the Richmond Convention Center January 14-16, 2012.

It’s the first big event of the season called Monument City Classic. It’s a tough tournament to start the season with when you have players that participate in school winter sports. Our practice schedule was difficult to meet for our players who had swimming, basketball, and other school events taking place. The first time our team will be all be together is at MCC. The girls arrived at the convention center fired up to play. We started with a line-up I thought might work. It was fine for a non-blocking or aggressive attacking team. Once I saw our weak spots, I made some changes and the girls started flowing really well on the court.

We started our first pool play against United 14, a team from North Carolina. We won two straight sets 25-8, and 25-18. Our second match was against another North Carolina team called Lightning, (same team name as us). We won both sets once again 25-14, and 25-15. Our final match of the day was against Beach Elite 14 from Virginia Beach. This team has been together for several years. The first match went 24-26, and the second match was 11-25. It was a tough match to lose. With the girls not getting to practice together, we had a lot of players moving out of their position, and trying to make solo point plays. We had very few three touch points, and a lot of dumping going on causing attitudes to get out of tune, and a lot of frustration to start taking place. We still made it into the “gold pool” on day two with our 2-1 record.

After reviewing the stats and notes from the day before, and talking to players one on one, I made some changes to the line-up for our next round of play on Sunday. We started off confused, and lost the first match to Triangle volleyball Club from North Carolina.   About half way through the second match they started to get comfortable and make it work. We were playing East Carolina 14 Black. The first set ended 16-25, but we took the second set 28-26. The East Carolina coach made some changes and we lost the third set 9-15. Our players did not adjust to changes on the spot, and it was costing us points. This is usually a problem when you have a team that don’t get to practice together, and are unsure of each other’s strengths. Over all it did show we could compete with the regional level teams.

Our next match was against Clash, a team from Manassas, Virginia knows for having strong teams.          I kept the new line up plans in place and the girls rallied to make it work. We won the first set 25-9. Their coach made some changes and we lost the second set 15-25. (Our missed serves did not help.) I told the girls they need to trust our changes and trust in each other on the court. We could not afford to make solo plays, we needed to play as a team.  It was up to them to play their positions and support each other on the court. It was a great third set to watch, the girls started gelling together and we won 15-10. We knew the teams were going to start getting tougher since we were in the gold pool, but in the end we learned to work with-in each other’s strengths and came together as a team. Winning this last match kept us in the top 12 teams out of 32 going into bracket play.

The girls were in good spirits, and really started to understand how each other moved on the court, and where they needed to pick up the slack for each other. Our last round of play started on Monday in bracket play. We had made it to the Bronze Bracket, (If we would have won that third set against East Carolina 14 Black we would have been in the Gold Bracket.)Regardless, our goal was to finish in the top 10 for our first event.

We were in semi finals against Fredericksburg ‘s 14 Black team, we came out serving strong, and making three touch plays to win the first set 25-20, lost the second set 18-25, we made a couple of adjustments, and took the third set 15-12. Even though we had a lot of miss serves the girls stayed positive and fought hard to make three touch plays to give us the victory.Now we were in the finals in the Bronze Division against Hampton Roads Juniors. It should have been an competitive victory, I had watch this team play, and knew their strengths and weakness. We lost the first set 20-25, by car less errors. It was tough to watch us lose to ourselves with mental issues. When were on, and playing as a team, we had some great plays that ended in points, but there were too many solo attempts that cost us. The girls tried to overcome their frustrations the second set, but in the end, we let our issues get the best of us, and we were defeated 19-25.

As with all sports teams there are always growing and learning pains to get through. In the end our team came together, learned to work together, and feel good about their team.We ended in 10th place out of 32 teams. The teams we lost too ended up in the following positions:

ECJVC took 3rd, Beach Elite took 4th, and Triangle took 5th. The team that won was Jammers from North Carolina.

7 out of the 10 ten teams were from North Carolina Region, 3 from the Old Dominion Region, and 1 from the Chesapeake Region.The results for all 32 teams are listed below.