Quick sidenote to the previous post: With everything that happened today, I managed to keep a positive attitude up until about 2 pm. When life continually knocks me down in the span of one day, usually something pushes me over the edge.
That happened when I received a Valentine's Day card from my grandparents (adorable, I know). Given the type of day I was having, this actually was a nice change of pace... Until I opened it, and saw that my grandma (the one NOT battling dementia mind you) spelled my name Brian. It was at that moment I died a little inside.
After sulking for the next hour or so, I decided to suck it up and begin focusing on the Harvard match. I was feeling pretty good going into the match, and felt like we would make a big statement if we took care of business.
Game 1 does NOT start well. Serve receive is a train wreck (myself included, aced 2 times in the match, both in the first set). Proceeded to get housed 3 times, attempting to swipe off hands in an unsuccessful manner. We proceed to lose 30-28. Second set we come out flat, they end up putting a pounding on us 30-23.
I can tolerate losing to the better team, and Harvard is a decent squad. However, we were playing WAY below our normal ability. Luckily, we snap out of it for sets 3 and 4 and win convincingly. Serve received started communicating more, our offense starts clicking, we're picking up more digs.
Unfortunately... set 5 starts a bit rough. Their middle is 6'9 and plays all the way around, and he catches fire. We go down 8-5 on the switch, and can't seem to chip away at their lead. Looking defeat in the eye at 14-10, we string together a few points to make it interesting, but a missed serve by Tally gives Harvard the 15-12 win as well as the match (I feel awful for Matt. Knowing the competitor he is, he'll dwell on that missed serve, but he was by far our most consistent player all night, as well as our best server, and if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have made it that far. Keep your head up bud).
The frustrating thing is, I don't feel like it was a matter of us being lazy or complacent, we simply didn't have our best stuff at the beginning, and although we picked it up towards the middle of the match, we finally met a team that took advantage of an opportunity when we gave it to them. It hurts to lose a match like that, but I have to keep telling myself that in the big picture, it has no effect on the goal at hand. Thursday's match at Endicott and Saturday's match at Rivier are much more important, and perhaps this is what we needed to toughen the skin so we're ready for those matches.
That's pretty much all I have to say about that. Today has been rough, but tomorrow's a new day. Time for bed.
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