Upset!!!

On Sunday, February 8th, we played Marienlyst for our final regular season match against them. Before the match, Marienlys list was 11-1, their only regular season loss was to us back in November when we beat them 3-1 at our gym. This time we headed to Odense to play them at their barn. With 2 weekends off from regular season play, Marienlyst managed to win the Pokal Cup Championship and the Nordic Championship. Needless to say there seemed to be some extra fans in the gym to see this allstar team. Including exhibition, tourniment play and regular season matches, I think we've played them close to 10 times already. As you can guess, a rivalry has started and even into warmup there was some 'discussion' beginning to boil!

They switched up their lineup a little bit, using a different libero and left side then we usually see. We jumped on these players serving consistently but tough. We didn't go on too many lng serving runs but our sideout game was very effective. We won the first set 25-18. After this they subbed back in the their starting leftside. Again, solid sideout and containment of their hitters allowed us to take a lead. They made a libero substition (which is now legal with the new 2009 rules) and had their starting lineup on the floor. We pushed through and won the second set 25-22. Tasting victory, we pushed even harder, however it led us to tighten up. Early in the set, we started to focus on winning instead of the individual tasks at hand. We got down 2 or 3 points however after clearing our heads we were able to battle back to even. Both teams sided out pretty evenly until we were finally victorious 30-28 to complete the sweep!

Victory is always nice, however, the match was a definite team effort. We started using different weapons that they had not previously seen (more pipe, more from one of our middles). Personally, I didn't attack on too many balls, as they switched their matchups after last weeks match in Sweden and I was matched up against their best blocker. I was able to still pass effectivly and play really solid defence.

All in all, another big step in the right direction!