After waking up to a lovely 8 am alarm clock my roommate accidentally forgot to shut off, I find myself unable to go back to sleep: Meanwhile, the other 3 in the room are comatose. It's not fair how quickly other people can fall back asleep. Oh well.
Anyways, it's Wednesday morning, and we've played two matches. The first was Monday night against Hope. I had the pleasure of going up against their 6-10 opposite, who played well, but didn't move particularly well.
Overall, I thought the team played hard. We lost 3 close games, but the effort we put forth that night probably would have given us wins in 3 or 4 of our previous 6 losses. Still, coach let us have it after the game... and honestly I believe her speech was 3 weeks late. She was right about a lot of things, and I hoped that it would translate into us coming in strong against Cal Baptist, top team in the nation for NAIA.
Cal Baptist was probably the most talented team I've seen since coming to Newbury, even moreso than Lewis last year. They serve INCREDIBLY tough. They have a 6'6 outside hitter from Brazil with near perfect form - you could teach a clinic with his fundamentals. They ran one of the fastest offenses we've played. There is a reason they are the top team in NAIA.
Despite all that, I feel our best effort could give them a run. When we're hot, we play the best volleyball I've ever been a part of. Talent at every position, good energy, all the things necessary to compete at this level.
We took a set from them, and had stints of great play, but ended up losing in four. Overall, I was much more aggravated from this loss than I was about the loss at Hope. It isn't about the end result: It's about the way we got there. We played with more fire/heart against Hope from the first point to the last, and although we chose at moments to bring that same intensity to Cal Bap, it certainly wasn't as consistent as it could have been.
We play Hope again tonight, and I look forward to getting some redemption against them. I read a great article at ESPN ( http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=nolan ) that talks about playing every game as if it was your last. From this point forward, I intend on doing so. We will take this game from Hope.
Off to breakfast.
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